(We're also expecting a very brief visit today from Professor Olaf Berwald, Ph.D., Chair, Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and Professor of German.)
1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument? Do you agree with Russell about this?
2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical ______, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is ___." Do these examples show a deep problem with language and its ability to accurately portray reality?3. A.J. Ayer's ______ Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as _____ ______. Is unverifiability the same thing as meaninglessness?
4. Humans don't have an _____, said Jean Paul Sartre, and are in "bad faith" like the ____ who thinks of himself as completely defined by his work. Is it possible to avoid bad faith in every situation?
5. What was Sartre's frustrating advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? Should he have said something else?
6. When Simone de Beauvoir said women are not born that way, she meant that they tend to accept what? Are any essential identities conferred by birth?
7. Which Greek myth did Albert Camus use to illustrate human absurdity, as he saw it? Do you ever feel that way? Do you worry that someday you might, in work or relationships or something else?
Weiner ch 13
- What is an "unrealizable"? Can you imagine yourself at age 60+?
- What did Cicero say old age does to personality? Do you think that's inevitable?
- What was Sartre's metaphor for what to do instead of trying to "find" yourself? What metaphor for life is implied by de Beauvoir's early declaration that her life would be an improvised "beautiful story"? Do you like either or both?
- How does the "balance shift" as we age? When do you think the shift will begin for you?
- What is "bad faith"? How does Sartre's example of the waiter illustrate it? Can you think of another example?
- What does the latest happiness research confirm? Do you think this will matter more to you later?
- What did Camus say is "enough..."? Is he right, do you think, about absurdity and its overcoming?
- What wasBertrand Russell's advice? Do you know any older people who've followed it? Are they role-models for you?
HWT
- What do you think of the Japanese sensitivity to nature and the seasons? 293
- What do you think of Shinto's "no clear-cut separation between the aesthetic, the moral, and the religious"? 294
- What do you think it means to think without concepts? 295
- Do you agree with what "the enlightened [Buddhist] declares"? 296
- Is time more a feeling than a concept? 296 What would Kant say?
- What do you think of Hume's "is/ought gap"? 297
- What can tea teach us? 299
- What is wabi-sabi? 300
- Was Kravinsky crazy? 301 How about Peter Singer? 302
- Should we consider the welfare of distant strangers as much as of kith and kin? 303
- Are Mozi and Mill saying the same thing? 304
- Kant's categorical imperative, again: any comment? 309
- Do you like Rawls' veil of ignorance idea? 309
- Do you agree with the key principles of the Enlightenment? 310
- Is Owen Flanagan right about "no sensible person"? 312
- Is the mixing desk a good metaphor for moral pluralism? Do you agree that it's not the same as laissez-faire relativism? 314-15
Discussion Questions
- Reading Mill's autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God. Do you agree or disagree with his reasoning? Why? 185
I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day at the age of eighteen I read _____'s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. Why I Am Not a Christian
- Should it bother us that logical paradoxes that seem to be true AND false can be formulated in grammatically correct statements? Does this show something important about the limits of language, thought, and (thus) philosophy? 186
- Were young A.J. Ayer and the Positivists on the right track with their Verification Principle? Or was the older, post-Near Death Experience Ayer wiser about beliefs that cannot be conclusively verified? 190, 194
- Do you agree with Sartre that humans, unlike inanimate objects such as inkwells, don't have an essential nature? Is our common biology, DNA etc. not essential to our species identity? 197
- If you become deeply involved in your work (or seem to, like Sartre's Waiter) are you in "bad faith"? 198
- What do you think of Sartre's advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? 199
- Do you agree with Simone de Beauvoir about accepting a gender identity based on men's judgments? 200
- Is life a Sisyphean struggle? Is it "absurd"? Do you agree with Camus that Sisyphus must be happy? Why or why not? 201
FL
- Do you see any parallels between 1962 (as reflected in the SDS Manifesto, for instance) and today? 212
- What's your opinion of "Gun nuts"? And what should we do about the epidemic of gun violence in America? 218
- Do you think of The Force (in Star Wars) as a "spiritual fantasy" or does it name something you consider real? 222
- Was the sudden and widespread availability of contraception (The Pill) in the '60s a positive development, all things considered? 230
- Is the fantasy of perpetual youth an infantilizing force in America? 233 (Compare with our next read, Why Grow Up)
- Are we becoming "fake humans"? 234
==
Podcasts-Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Arendt, Popper, Ordinary Language, Trolley Problems
In Our Time
Simone de Beauvoir. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential work, The Second Sex, her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men. Published in 1949, it was an immediate success with the thousands of women who bought it. Many male critics felt men came out of it rather badly. Beauvoir was born in 1908 to a high bourgeois family and it was perhaps her good fortune that her father lost his money when she was a girl. With no dowry, she pursued her education in Paris to get work and in a key exam to allow her to teach philosophy, came second only to Jean Paul Sartre. He was retaking. They became lovers and, for the rest of their lives together, intellectual sparring partners. Sartre concentrated on existentialist philosophy; Beauvoir explored that, and existentialist ethics, plus the novel and, increasingly in the decades up to her death in 1986, the situation of women in the world.
Camus. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Algerian-French writer and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Shortly after the new year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus. In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his unfinished autobiography The First Man. Camus was 46. Born in Algeria in 1913, Camus became a working class hero and icon of the French Resistance. His friendship with Sartre has been well documented, as has their falling out; and although Camus has been dubbed both an Absurdist and Existentialist philosopher, he denied he was even a philosopher at all, preferring to think of himself as a writer who expressed the realities of human existence. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus’ legacy is a rich one, as an author of plays, novels and essays, and as a political thinker who desperately sought a peaceful solution to the War for Independence in his native Algeria.
Ordinary Language Philosophy. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. With its roots in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ordinary Language Philosophy is concerned with the meanings of words as used in everyday speech. Its adherents believed that many philosophical problems were created by the misuse of words, and that if such 'ordinary language' were correctly analysed, such problems would disappear. Philosophers associated with the school include some of the most distinguished British thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Gilbert Ryle and JL Austin.
Hannah Arendt. In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She developed many of her ideas in response to the rise of totalitarianism in the C20th, partly informed by her own experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany before her escape to France and then America. She wanted to understand how politics had taken such a disastrous turn and, drawing on ideas of Greek philosophers as well as her peers, what might be done to create a better political life. Often unsettling, she wrote of 'the banality of evil' when covering the trial of Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust.
Karl Popper. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper whose ideas about science and politics robustly challenged the accepted ideas of the day. He strongly resisted the prevailing empiricist consensus that scientists' theories could be proved true. Popper wrote: “The more we learn about the world and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance”. He believed that even when a scientific principle had been successfully and repeatedly tested, it was not necessarily true. Instead it had simply not proved false, yet! This became known as the theory of falsification.He called for a clear demarcation between good science, in which theories are constantly challenged, and what he called “pseudo sciences” which couldn't be tested. His debunking of such ideologies led some to describe him as the “murderer of Freud and Marx”. He went on to apply his ideas to politics, advocating an Open Society. His ideas influenced a wide range of politicians, from those close to Margaret Thatcher, to thinkers in the Eastern Communist bloc and South America. So how did Karl Popper change our approach to the philosophy of science? How have scientists and philosophers made use of his ideas? And how are his theories viewed today? Are we any closer to proving scientific principles are “true”?
The Scientific Method. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought. In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.
The Meaning of Life According to AJ Ayer. What was an English philosopher doing at a New York party, saving the young model Naomi Campbell from a rather pushy boxing heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson? The philosopher was Alfred Jules Ayer, who was just as at home mixing with the glitterati as he was with Oxford dons. On the one hand he was an academic, on the other a celebrity and bon viveur.
The Philosopher's ArmsSeries 4 Episode 2 of 4
Pints and Philosophical Problems with Matthew Sweet. This week, trolleyology: how should you decide between two morally troubling courses of action? This is a question which affects both soldiers in the heat of action and decision-makers in the NHS. Matthew is joined in the snug by philosopher David Edmonds.
Sartre. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, playwright, and philosopher who became the king of intellectual Paris and a focus of post war politics and morals. Sartre's own life was coloured by jazz, affairs, Simone de Beauvoir and the intellectual camaraderie of Left Bank cafes. He maintained an extraordinary output of plays, novels, biographies, and philosophical treatises as well as membership of the communist party and a role in many political controversies. He produced some wonderful statements: "my heart is on the left, like everyone else's", and "a human person is what he is not, not what he is", and, most famously "we are condemned to be free". Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Sartre's novels and plays express his ideas and what light Sartre's life brings to bear on his philosophy and his philosphy on his life.
Simone de Beauvoir. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential work, The Second Sex, her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men. Published in 1949, it was an immediate success with the thousands of women who bought it. Many male critics felt men came out of it rather badly. Beauvoir was born in 1908 to a high bourgeois family and it was perhaps her good fortune that her father lost his money when she was a girl. With no dowry, she pursued her education in Paris to get work and in a key exam to allow her to teach philosophy, came second only to Jean Paul Sartre. He was retaking. They became lovers and, for the rest of their lives together, intellectual sparring partners. Sartre concentrated on existentialist philosophy; Beauvoir explored that, and existentialist ethics, plus the novel and, increasingly in the decades up to her death in 1986, the situation of women in the world.
Camus. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Algerian-French writer and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Shortly after the new year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus. In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his unfinished autobiography The First Man. Camus was 46. Born in Algeria in 1913, Camus became a working class hero and icon of the French Resistance. His friendship with Sartre has been well documented, as has their falling out; and although Camus has been dubbed both an Absurdist and Existentialist philosopher, he denied he was even a philosopher at all, preferring to think of himself as a writer who expressed the realities of human existence. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus’ legacy is a rich one, as an author of plays, novels and essays, and as a political thinker who desperately sought a peaceful solution to the War for Independence in his native Algeria.
Bertrand Russell. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872 into an aristocratic family, Russell is widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytic philosophy, which is today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. In his important book The Principles of Mathematics, he sought to reduce mathematics to logic. Its revolutionary ideas include Russell's Paradox, a problem which inspired Ludwig Wittgenstein to pursue philosophy. Russell's most significant and famous idea, the theory of descriptions, had profound consequences for the discipline.
In addition to his academic work, Russell played an active role in many social and political campaigns. He supported women's suffrage, was imprisoned for his pacifism during World War I and was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He wrote a number of books aimed at the general public, including The History of Western Philosophy which became enormously popular, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Russell's many appearances on the BBC also helped to promote the public understanding of ideas.
In addition to his academic work, Russell played an active role in many social and political campaigns. He supported women's suffrage, was imprisoned for his pacifism during World War I and was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He wrote a number of books aimed at the general public, including The History of Western Philosophy which became enormously popular, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Russell's many appearances on the BBC also helped to promote the public understanding of ideas.
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, work and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is little doubt that he was a towering figure of the twentieth century; on his return to Cambridge in 1929 Maynard Keynes wrote, “Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train”.Wittgenstein is credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, a thinker who left not one but two philosophies for his descendents to argue over: The early Wittgenstein said, “the limits of my mind [language] mean the limits of my world”; the later Wittgenstein replied, “If God looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of”. Language was at the heart of both. Wittgenstein stated that his purpose was to finally free humanity from the pointless and neurotic philosophical questing that plagues us all. As he put it, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”.How did he think language could solve all the problems of philosophy? How have his ideas influenced contemporary culture? And could his thought ever achieve the release for us that he hoped it would?With Ray Monk, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius; Barry Smith, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Marie McGinn, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York.
Ordinary Language Philosophy. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. With its roots in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ordinary Language Philosophy is concerned with the meanings of words as used in everyday speech. Its adherents believed that many philosophical problems were created by the misuse of words, and that if such 'ordinary language' were correctly analysed, such problems would disappear. Philosophers associated with the school include some of the most distinguished British thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Gilbert Ryle and JL Austin.
Hannah Arendt. In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She developed many of her ideas in response to the rise of totalitarianism in the C20th, partly informed by her own experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany before her escape to France and then America. She wanted to understand how politics had taken such a disastrous turn and, drawing on ideas of Greek philosophers as well as her peers, what might be done to create a better political life. Often unsettling, she wrote of 'the banality of evil' when covering the trial of Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust.
Karl Popper. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper whose ideas about science and politics robustly challenged the accepted ideas of the day. He strongly resisted the prevailing empiricist consensus that scientists' theories could be proved true. Popper wrote: “The more we learn about the world and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance”. He believed that even when a scientific principle had been successfully and repeatedly tested, it was not necessarily true. Instead it had simply not proved false, yet! This became known as the theory of falsification.He called for a clear demarcation between good science, in which theories are constantly challenged, and what he called “pseudo sciences” which couldn't be tested. His debunking of such ideologies led some to describe him as the “murderer of Freud and Marx”. He went on to apply his ideas to politics, advocating an Open Society. His ideas influenced a wide range of politicians, from those close to Margaret Thatcher, to thinkers in the Eastern Communist bloc and South America. So how did Karl Popper change our approach to the philosophy of science? How have scientists and philosophers made use of his ideas? And how are his theories viewed today? Are we any closer to proving scientific principles are “true”?
==
The Scientific Method. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought. In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.
The Meaning of Life According to AJ Ayer. What was an English philosopher doing at a New York party, saving the young model Naomi Campbell from a rather pushy boxing heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson? The philosopher was Alfred Jules Ayer, who was just as at home mixing with the glitterati as he was with Oxford dons. On the one hand he was an academic, on the other a celebrity and bon viveur.
So what does this logician have to say about the meaning of life?
In 1988, a year before his death, he gave a lecture at the Conway Hall in which he set out his notion of existence. By this time, ‘Freddie’ Ayer was one of the UK’s most prominent public intellectuals, with regular television and radio appearances, discussing the moral issues of the day.
Ayer’s former student at Oxford, philosopher AC Grayling, remembers the tutor that became his friend. He explores the man of contradictions – the atheist who almost recanted after a near-death incident; the deep thinker with a weakness for mistresses and Tottenham Hotspur. What was his contribution to philosophy? How did it inform the way he lived his life? What, if anything, can we learn from Freddie’s view on the big question?
The Philosopher's ArmsSeries 4 Episode 2 of 4
Pints and Philosophical Problems with Matthew Sweet. This week, trolleyology: how should you decide between two morally troubling courses of action? This is a question which affects both soldiers in the heat of action and decision-makers in the NHS. Matthew is joined in the snug by philosopher David Edmonds.
==
Philosophy Bites
Sebastian Gardner on Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith
Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness is sometimes described as the bible of existentialism. At its core is the notion of Bad Faith. For this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Sebastian Gardner, author of a recent book about Bei...
Kate Manne on Misogyny and Male Entitlement
Cornell philosopher Kate Manne discusses misognyn, male entitlement, together with the notion of 'himpathy', a term she coined, in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Manne is the author of two recent highly influential books, ...
Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
Ray Monk discusses the relationship between philosophy and a philosopher's life in this interview with Nigel Warburton for the Philosophy Bites podcast. Can understanding the biographical context of a philosopher and the type of person t...
David Edmonds on Wittgenstein's Poker
For this second special lockdown episode of Philosophy Bites, Nigel Warburton interviewed David Edmonds about his bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker, which he wrote with John Eidinow. This brilliant book is an exploration of an event that...
Melissa Lane on Plato and Totalitarianism
Was Plato's ideal state a totalitarian one? Karl Popper, thought so, and made his case in The Open Society and Its Enemies. Melissa Lane, author of Plato's Progeny discusses Popper's critique of Plato in this episode of Philosophy Bites....
David Edmonds on Trolley Problems
Is it ever morally acceptable to kill one person to save five? Most people think that it can be. But are we consistent in this? In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Nigel Warburton interviews David Edmonds (co-creator of Philo...
Julian Baggini on Thought Experiments
Philosophers often use elaborate thought experiments in their writing. Are these anything more than rhetorical flourishes? Or do they reveal important aspects of the questions under discussion. Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers'...
LHP 1
ReplyDeleteReading Mill’s autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God. This was because he saw a problem with the First Clause Argument, which was “what caused God.” He believed that because one thing (God) doesn’t have a cause then the idea that everything has a cause was illogical. I disagree with Russell about this because I don’t believe that disproving this one argument is enough proof to reject God completely. This is not the only evidence for the existence of God.
LHP 2
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a barber who shaves all who don’t shave themselves is a logical paradox. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like “This sentence is false.” These questions do make me question how well language is able to accurately portray reality. However, I also cannot seem to think of a solution to fix this problem. This may be one of those problems that we cannot fix, and we just need to be aware of.
LHP 5
ReplyDeleteSartre’s advice was that he was free and should choose for himself. I agree with the fact that Sartre didn’t make the decision for him because that is a huge responsibility. The outcome of the student’s choice would fall on Sartre and would be his “fault.” Sartre’s advice wasn’t wrong but it was honestly useless. He could’ve helped the student think through the issue and come to a conclusion of what he could live with, something possibly happening to his mother or living with the fact that he didn’t help in the war.
HWT 2 What is wabi-sabi? It is an aesthetic principle concerned with capturing the “bitter-sweet pathos of things,” a sweetness that is never overpowered by the sour.
ReplyDeleteWeiner 1. What is an "unrealizable"? Can you imagine yourself at age 60+? An “unrealizable” is a “state of being we inahbit but never fully internalize; only others do.” In other words, we will never feel old or realize it. I don’t think that I can imagine myself past the age of 60.
ReplyDeleteI think this is actually a very interesting point. I have noticed that when I talk with older people, grandparents, friends, etc., they always say "I may be __ years old, but I don't feel a day over 30." I think it's interesting that most of the time, our bodies can't keep up with our minds. Some of the world's greatest thinkers, inventors, and artists were what we'd consider "old," but it's only physically. Their minds are still active! The point I'm making is that I don't think our elders even see themselves as old in their minds, so how can we? I can't imagine myself as an old woman, and honestly why would I want to? It's a very interesting concept to think about.
DeleteWeiner 2. What did Cicero say old age does to personality? Do you think that's inevitable?He said that old age, rather than producing new personality traits, amplifies existing traits. I don’t think this is inevitable. I think we are capable of change at any age, but in any case, I don’t think it is as black and white as this.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you! As we get older I think we get more comfortable with who we are, at least in my experience, and that helps us to be more amplified in our personalities. I know a lot of older people say the darndest things just because they can as well, just to stir the pot, and that also comes with the territory of age and personality. But, like most things in the world, it's not a cut and dry answer. We (humans) are always changing and evolving with the culture, the climate, etc., so it doesn't make sense to put us into such a cookie cutter idea.
DeleteWeiner #6
ReplyDeleteWhat does the latest happiness research confirm? Do you think this will matter more to you later?
"The latest research confirms what Epicurus observed two millennia ago: friendship is one of our greatest sources of happiness." I think as I grow older I might grow to appreciate the friends I've made and the relationships I've maintained over the years, but they matter to me now so I'm not sure how much more they will matter in the future. Only time will tell.
I think too that as we grow older, we will learn to cherish our friendships and the time we have with our friends because unfortunately it is fleeting. Like you said, I already appreciate the friends I have, but maybe as life goes on I will learn just how important they are to me on a wider scale. It really is something you can't know until you're in it.
DeleteHannah Ferreira H01
ReplyDelete1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument? Do you agree with Russell about this?
Reading John Stuart Mills’ autobiography led Bertrand Russell to reject God. His logical problem with the First Cause argument was that because everything had a cause, God had to have a cause. I think that the First Cause argument more easily disarms the idea of the Big Bang theory or something like that. Nothing can’t cause anything. The idea that there is an eternal, noncreated being makes the creation of the world make more sense than an explosion coming out of nowhere.
LHP
ReplyDelete2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical ____Paradox__, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is _false__." Do these examples show a deep problem with language and its ability to accurately portray reality?
i think that they show the weaknesses of languages ability to portray reality but does not mean that words cannot accurately portray reality; One just needs to be more thoughtful when using language, as language is a tool whose power comes from who is using it as well as how it is used.
H02 - LHP 2
ReplyDeleteParadox, false; It shows that language can't be used to portray everything completely accurately, but it can at least try to work to explain things. It's not perfect, but it's what we have and it does a satisfactory job.
1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument? Do you agree with Russell about this?
ReplyDeleteReading John Stuart Mill's autobiography led to Russell rejecting God. The logical problem that he saw with the First Cause Argument was that if God didn't have a cause then everything couldn't have a cause.
2. What is an "unrealizable"? Can you imagine yourself at age 60+?
An unrealizable is a state of being we inhabit but never fully internalize but others do. I can imagine myself being 60 or older.
3. How does the "balance shift" as we age? When do you think the shift will begin for you?
The balance shifts from control to acceptance as we age. For me I think the shift to acceptance would begin when I'm quite old.
Adriana Ramirez Seis LHP H03
ReplyDelete1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument? Do you agree with Russell about this?
Russell read the autobiography of John Stuart Mill. He realized there was a problem with Aquinas’ First Cause Argument - that if everything has a cause, God also has to have a cause. I can see how generalized statements cause issues. I don’t believe in God because of the First Cause Argument and I can see why it is invalid. I don’t believe God had a cause though.