Existentialism
.... playwrights were Albert Camus,
and Jean Anouilh. Just like Anouilh, Camus accidentally became the spokesman for
the French Underground when he wrote his famous essay, "Le Mythe de Sisyphe" or
"The Myth of Sisyphus". Sisyphus was the man condemned by the gods to roll a
rock to the top of a mountain, only to have it roll back down again. For Camus,
this related heavily to everyday life, and he saw Sisyphus an "absurd" hero,
with a pointless existance. Camus felt that it was necessary to wonder what the
meaning of life was, and that the human being longed for some sense of clarity
in the world, since "if the world were clear, art w .....
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Utilitarianism
.... We should try to maximize the sum of increases
in well-being across times counting future lives equally against those in the
present. Our moral goal should always be to produce the greatest total of such
gains, no matter by whom they are enjoyed.
Utilitarianism has been extensively discussed by philosophers, and many
objections have been raised against it. Two objections are especially relevant
here. First, utilitarianism is an extremely, even excessively demanding moral
view for most humans. If we have a duty always to bring about the best outcome,
than any time we can increase the well-being of others (which is just abo .....
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The Five Factor Model Of Personality
.... In general, trait theories assume that people vary simultaneously on
a number of personality factors. These traits are of both the conjunctive and
disjunctive form. Therefore, to understand a trait, it is necessary to
understand what a particular trait is and what type of behaviour is evidence of
that trait. (Atkinson et al., 1993). Five factor theorists are one set of trait
theorists. The claim of five factor theorists is that behaviour can be best
predicted and explained by measurement of five dominant personality factors. The
five factor theory is a fairly recent proposal and has its basis in earlier work,
which .....
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The Formation Of An Individual: Cases, Terms, & Tools
.... own realization.
Before we can break free of the oppression that I just described we must first
be able to realize when we are being oppressed. Through a complicated process
of influence we gain our own thoughts, words, and actions. It first starts with
our own set of beliefs. Most likely the ones that our parents set for us. But
after we gain that first sense of who we are, and who we should be, then and
only then can we realize if we are oppressed. We must understand the actions of
ourselves before we can understand those of others.
On the journey to create our own individuality we need to be influenced because
after .....
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Freedom And Reason In Kant
.... that is, it must be possible for a
man to act in a certain way for the sole reason that willing in this way is
prescribed by a universal law, no matter what the empirical results will be.
A will to which moral considerations apply must be, in the strictest sense,
a free will, one that can function independently of the laws of natural
causality. The concept of morality, therefore, has to be explained in terms of a
universal moral law, and the ability to will in obedience to such a law leads us
to postulate the freedom. The freedom which Kant is talking about, is not only a
negative freedom consisting in the absence of constrai .....
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Our Free Will
.... of free choice,
but there are others who presume “we are servants of cosmic destiny or that
behavior is nothing but a reflex of heredity and environment.” The position
of determinism is that every event is the necessary outcome of a cause or set
of causes. That everything is a consequence of external forces, and such
forces produce all that happens. Man is not free. If we accept the
determinist argument and assume human behavior as a consequence of external
factors rather than of free choice, then we must realize that our explanation
of human behavior leaves no room for morality. If people do not choose their
actions, th .....
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Functionalism And Physicalism
.... pin-pricks, etc.). But, according to
Putnam, if the Physicalists does indeed attributes the name "physical states"
to the enormous number of mental states we humans have, then, I think it would
be impossible for them to be concerned only with the type and not the tokens.
But once they started to consider each specific pain (token), they will have to
ascribe a different physical-chemical state to each token-state. Ultimately,
the common thing "to all pains in virtue of which they are pains (Block, p.
172)" cannot be put in terms of a single physical state. Recall that the same
problem does not exist in the consideration of Fu .....
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Kant: Goodness
.... the Old Testament. God decided that the human race was too
evil to survive, so he flooded it. God killed, as well as the Misfit. This
isn't the same as Christ, though; it just adds to the religious element.
Christ's mission was to try and rid the world of evil, and sacrificed for it.
The Misfit sacrificed his freedom initially, was "reborn" again by escaping
from jail, and become a Christ like figure again...he's now reborn, and his
mission has an even stronger exclamation point on it, just like Christ's after
he was resurrected. The literal differences are obvious; Christ never held
anyone at gunpoint, let alone kill old .....
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The Quarrel About Historical Explanation
.... a
sketch. The second group states that the general laws are not necessary and as
long as the explanation provides an understandable narrative, it is complete.
The final group believes that only one condition is necessary, and if more
information is needed, one only needs to elaborate on that one condition.
The Hempelians and the anti-Hempelians both have common ground. They
are both engaged in the philosophy of history, but this is where the agreement
stops for even the groups starting points are different.
Hempelians give their explanations to answer the question of why
something happened. Their objective is to replace curio .....
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Thomas Hobbes: What Is The Difference Between Obligations In Foro Interno And In Foro Externo, And When Do We Have Such Obligations?
.... himself." The
question now is, when do we have an obligation to strive towards peace when it
means giving up our natural rights?
According to Hobbes, we always have an obligation to work towards peace,
and have an obligation in foro interno, but not always in foro externo. The
difference between there two are that in foro interno means inside you, or you
believing in something. In this case, it would mean that inside you, you would
want to strive for peace because it would mean an end to worrying about your
life. No longer would you have to walk around in a state of nature where any one
can come and take your life. .....
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Human Perception: An Intimate Look Into The Most Intriguing Aspect Of Modern Psychology
.... possibility of a fourth dimension, human beings have longed to see it.
Many people assume that it does not exist simply because they cannot see it.
They are not able to see the yellow "run-way" into the heart of a flower, but to
the bee and an ultraviolet light, that "run-way" is certainly real. People's
physical use of their own perception is very limited, as such noticeable in the
"tunnel-vision" effect. A good example of the Tunnel Vision effect is a
perception or thought such as "if I cannot see it, it simply does not exist". We
as humans are limited not only to what we can sense, but how we perceive what we
sense .....
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Hume's Mind Game
.... but I see what Hume is trying to
get at. Everything that is thought to be definite can change. There is no
proven facts that say the sun will come up tomorrow, we just assume it will. In
Hume's writing, assumption is a dangerous word. Assumption is made up of what
you believe and what you don't. I can believe light will turn on when I hit the
switch, but I can not rule out the fact that it will not turn on. It is
probable that the light will turn on, but not definite. Hume says probabilities
are what the mind is consuming during everyday life. Science give the facts
because it has been tested and proved. "Everyday life" .....
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