to exist is to question existence itself

3 word format

Language : english

humanities/philosophy

school essay

date published

19/10/2007

review : not yet assessed

level : Advanced

requested 1 times

Summary

Writers define themselves by their purposes. A novelist writes to entertain, to embrace the imagination and create a world of escape for the reader. A columnist writes to inform, to relay the facts and describe a world of current events for the reader. What, however, exists in-between? With such a large gray area between truth and untruth, surely some writers thrive upon this ambiguity, writers who can both relay the facts and create the world in which these facts exist. These writers are documentarians, individuals who have found that balance between fiction and nonfiction, who do not lie but are fastidious about the truth they tell. And in their actions and in their desires, they have formulated firsthand the definition of a documentary; for a documentary strives not to answer the questions previously conceived by society, but strives instead to devise its own questions for society to answer itself.

Writers define themselves by their purposes.
The main difference between a documentary and other forms of writing is the proper balance of subjectivity and objectivity.
The first choice a documentarian makes that solidifies this definition of a documentary is his subject matter.
If a documentary were to lack emotional input, it would consequently lack opinion.
Although it comes short of developing the questions a documentary should ask, Bowling for Columbine does embody the overall essence of one.
The power of the documentarian to choose what becomes part of his documentary is the strongest voice he has.
This purpose is a purpose of questions and answers, of truths and manipulation; it is a game where the documentarian is the king and the audience merely pawns.

$2.95

3 word format

Language : english

humanities/philosophy

school essay

date published

02/10/2007

review : not yet assessed

level : Advanced

requested 0 times

Summary

Panpsychism describes a world in which “everything has a mind (Chalmers 298),” and everything- animal, botanical, even mineral- is conscious. In order to determine whether or not all things are indeed conscious, two problems must be addressed. A definition of what it means to be conscious must be accepted, and further, the nature of that consciousness (the mechanism by which experience is experienced) must be ascertained. Rather than actually attempting to achieve a definitive answer to these questions in this paper, several hypotheses and their critiques will be discussed.

Panpsychism describes a world in which 'everything has a mind (Chalmers 298),' and everything- animal, botanical, even mineral- is conscious. In order to determine whether or not all things are indeed conscious, two problems must be addressed.
For Thomas Nagel, the question of the consciousness of a particular organism boils down to whether or not 'there is something that it is like to be that organism .?
Rather than solving the problem of universal consciousness, this Realist approach to panpsychism merely considers what further problems must be addressed before a complete definition can be determined.
Extrapolating this discussion of mental states to the ‘minds' of those things which we intuitively believe to be unconscious- plants and rocks, for example- leads to a philosophical catch-22.
The distinction between cognition and consciousness is Chalmers' second significant contribution to the panpsychism debate.
While Chalmers formulates that ‘everything has a mind,' Buddhism posits that ‘everything is mind.?
The citta-matra (mind-only) tradition of Buddhism distinguishes three levels of consciousness.
To relate these concepts directly back to the discussion of panpsychism is quite logical.
This model of existence, which demonstrates that existence is contingent on consciousness and vice-versa, suggests a possible solution to Nagel's missing link.

$6.95

7 word format

Language : english

international relations

presentation

date published

29/08/2006

review : not yet assessed

level : Expert

requested 4 times

Summary

General De Gaulle once said that all alliances are like roses: they wither and decay. NATO might be a counter-example or it might not. While during the Munich Conference, the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, claimed “As an alliance we have never been stronger. We have never been more united. We have never been more resolved to move forward together,” the general opinion was quite the opposite. On both sides of the Atlantic, no one would say that this statement strongly reflects the current reality. On the contrary, NATO is actually a huge object of controversies and is at a crossroads, trying to define its future, if any. Is NATO still relevant in a world of evolving coalitions and global economies? Is there a place for a military partnership originally formed to counter balance the Soviet Union (USSR) that no longer exists? Will the eternally-fraught transatlantic relationship be the downfall of the most powerful military alliance in the world? In order to understand this debate better, I will first present the framework of the current NATO’s controversy, and then describe the NATO’s advocates’ point of view. I will consequently discuss the fact that, without reforming, NATO is no longer relevant in a post Cold War world.

Right off the get go one can see these two philosopher’s thoughts on morality appose one another, but their differences goes far beyond a petty disagreement over morality. The nature of their conflict goes much deeper, past a simple debate over what is good and what is evil. Together these two thinkers represent both sides of an argument over the very nature of morality. Kant affirms that morality is something universal, a metaphysical ideal completely separated from the world of experience through the use of reason. Nietzsche attacks not only Kant’s morality but the very ground Kant founds his morality in, challenging not only the purpose of morality, but the creditability of rationality and even its basis in causality.

Understanding Kant's notions of morality.
The problem plaguing Kant.
The first imperative is a test of universality.
The second categorical imperative is the principle of treating each rational agent as an ends not a means.
The third categorical imperative is the realization that all people legislate natural law.
The forth categorical imperative has its foundation laid forth in the third imperative.
Nietzsche's thoughts on morality.
Master morality was the morality of those in power.
The truth that Nietzsche saw Kant placing in the god function was reason.

$2.95

3 word format

Language : english

humanities/philosophy

school essay

date published

04/01/2008

review : not yet assessed

level : Advanced

requested 2 times

Summary

It is my opinion that the distinction between self and body, as set out in the Vaisesika and mentioned in the Vedanta (Sourcebook, 1957, pp121-138, 386-423) , is an extremely cogent theory which seems to be able to reply to most objections raised to it. In this essay I will attempt to show how this theory works and any problems that are raised regarding it. I will also show the similarities and differences between the theory of self and body in the Vaisesika and the Bhagavad-Gita, and show how the Vaisesika seems to have the upper hand in the area of dispute between the two (Chakrabarti, 1999, chs 2-10).

In the Vaisesika the self, or atman, is described as being imperceptible.
The Vaisesika also says that consciousness cannot belong to the sense-organs.
The mind cannot contain the self or consciousness.
Whatever is unoriginated is nonexistent.
The Vaisesika believe that saying ‘the self does not exist' is equal to saying ‘I do not exist?.
There is one major difference between the theories of the Vaisesika and the Bhagavad-Gita.

$2.95

3 word format

Language : english

humanities/philosophy

school essay

date published

12/10/2007

review : not yet assessed

level : Advanced

requested 2 times

Summary

Mythology: the bookstore catalogue designation where religions go to die. When the believers cease believing in their gods, and when the gods cease believing in themselves. We often forget we once worshiped Zeus and those other “primitive” gods with the same blind passion and fear as we dedicate to Jesus Christ. Yet religions, like the civilizations founded on their tomes and tablets, exist in cycles. They rise and fall. But during the rise, the fall is never visible; the end is forever beyond the horizon. Rome was not built in a day, but what Roman would not contest that stones crumble far quicker than they are carved? Dead religions, stripped of faith, litter the collective consciousness of mankind. Still, they are more pervasive, more persuasive, than we realize. More pervasive and persuasive, in fact, than they were alive. Embedded in culture, embedded in literature, mythologies reach further into the core of humanity than any active religion through the very distance that delegates them to a shelf somewhere behind history, behind World War II and the Middle East, as a study of ancient ways of life far from the shelves of Bible’s and the modern world.

Mythology: the bookstore catalogue designation where religions go to die.
Once, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome were not myths at all.
With the death of a religion, with distance, meaning can exist.
I believe we can find direction, instruction, better in the past than the present.
One day, Christianity will join the Greeks and Romans, the Celtics and Norsemen, the Egyptians and Native Americans on the shelves of mythology.

$3.95

4 word format

Language : english

humanities/philosophy

term papers

date published

10/05/2007

review : not yet assessed

level : General public

requested 8 times

Summary

Perhaps one of the most widely and longest-held issues that have been debated in the study of philosophy, is that of the dispute over the way in which we as humans can accurately describe the external world with regards to our everyday lives. Philosophers range in opinion from a view in accordance with that of George Berkeley and Bertrand Russell--who believe that we receive knowledge about the external world from our sense experience of a sole, correct picture of reality--to those who agree with skeptics such as Peter Unger--who insist that nobody can ever know that anything is so. Hilary Putnam tends to avoid either view by claiming a somewhat unique position, which allegedly evades both ‘descriptive relativism’ and ‘radical cultural relativism’. He in turn maintains that respective ways of describing the world are equally accurate; because there is no “conceptually neutral description of the world”. Putnam’s argument, I feel, lays the ground for accepting his view, and with sufficient evidence and explanation can persuade his readers to take his stance.

Voltaire has been said to have been mocking Leibniz’s popular theory that “whatever is, is right,” (Pope, l.294) in Candide. While that is true, it only scratches the surface. The more significant fact is that the language and logic with which Candide satirizes Leibniz mock the very idea that philosophy provides definite answers about the nature of the universe, exemplified perfectly in Pangloss’ response to Candide’s inquiry as to whether or not he can “continue to believe that all was for the best:” “I hold firmly to my original views ... I am a philosopher after all: it would not do for me to recant” (88). Philosophy, instead, is the practice of trying to be right. The hilarity of all philosophic absolutes is pointed out through the marriage of the book’s disproof of optimism via proving its opposite—the worst of all possible worlds—with a destabilized narrative that allows the reader to understand that Candide itself is a narrative with its own tendencies and exaggerations.

Leibniz's theory is exhibited as ridiculous and indigestible from the get-go.
El Dorado offers the concession; it is as perfect as could be.
Jean Baudrillard and his concept of the 'murder of the real? .
the reader finds that the disproof of optimism unconvincingly presented.
Candide at least superficially plays into the idea of the worst of all possible worlds.
Can Candide's characters escape the need to mythologize?

$5.95

6 word format

Language : english

educational studies

case study

date published

14/04/2008

review : not yet assessed

level : General public

requested 0 times

Summary

A country subjects itself to the hegemony of essentialism through its use of borders to define its geography and its attempts to effectively identify itself through the distillation of its dominant cultural characteristics. It subscribes to the notion of hierarchy through the resulting stagnation of quantification and demobilization of investment in the development and urbanization of a country’s geographic location. Every singularizing act is tied to essentialism through a relation to identity as an ultimate truth or an ultimate goal. Prior to World War II, countries subscribed to the shared language of identification: borders, history, geography and economic power, as well as a relation through dominant and subversive countries.

World War II exploded this system of singular identity and imploded a general conviction of absolute truth, or essentialism.
The singularity of identity and the separation between thought and reality, or the separation between meaning and language, are starting points.
In order to maintain a sense of achievement, the ‘truth' must always remain in sight.
The direct objectives of form are contrasted by the seemingly contradictory motives of the woman.
In order to 'jump out of the fighting line' identity must be broken down and restructured; identity must fail as signifiers fail.
But the Pacheco's have been depoliticized, their mobility has scattered.
The most literal 'educational' attempt was a pristine four-foot by five-foot, color photograph.

$2.95

3 word format

Language : english

humanities/philosophy

school essay

date published

04/01/2008

review : not yet assessed

level : Advanced

requested 0 times