150001043 Philosophy Class Blog

I know we just ended the class today, but when will grades be posted?

Though I feel that I was confused throughout this course, I do feel that I am know better able to question, and understand the reason things happen around me. Why are humans so different from other animals, and how we can rationalize why we have free will or do not, and why we exist, our thoughts and memeories.

I was not thrilled about taking this course at first, but it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I think that the hardest part for me was trying to sit still for 3 hours, that was a challenge.

As we were learning the naturalistic approach to ethics, and we came to the "climatic conclusion" (basically, The Golden Rule), I realized something. We've spent the past three weeks learning about philisophical theories that seem to fly in the face of religion (functionalism, no free will, etc.), yet we came to the same conclusion that Christianity and many other religions did: do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Perhaps we spend too much time trying to figure out lives for ourselves when the answer's been right there in the middle of a book for thousands of years. Perhaps people back then were smarter than we give them credit for.
In the end though, I very much enjoyed the class, and I feel that I've learned quite a bit from it. I do think it's important to reflect on ourselves and continue to improve, it's an important part of "growing up" as a species. Good luck to everyone here in their future classes.

Its been on my mind since we started class today, and I just didn't know what to say because yeah, God destroyed people and nature via the flood. He almost made Abraham kill his own son, He definetly seems like a vengful God. Now look on less of a vengful angry God to a more loving and concerned omnicient God. Job for example, lost everything...his family, his home, everything. Job ends up getting 7 times as much as he had before because he was faithful. Abraham...was going to kill his son because God told him too...yet at the last second said no...and made him the father of all nations. There was a comment about Cain's decendents and how they are cursed because of God. If you trace Cain's decendents through history, it isn't the "blacks" who are the decendents, yet another culture that was enslaved and wiped out. As a matter of fact, God blessed one of Moses' sons and his decendents for not looking at his father in a sexual manner (I know...weird)...and his decendents actually become Ethiopians...which are the "blacks" in this case. It just seems like the ones who do believe in God believe that He does things out of love even if the believer suffers. The ones who don't believe think that even if God exists, He is an angry God who ONLY punishes the wicked and JUSTIFIES the believer.

This is kind of random, but I was watching Star Wars episode two the other day and there was a scene that got me thinking about philosophy. (Forgive me if I don't explain the scene very well, I am not very up to date on my Star Wars trivia.) C3PO ended up in a body shop where evil robots were being made. He was taken apart and his head was placed on one of the evil robots bodies, and one of the evil robot's heads was placed onto his. During the war between the empire and the jedi C3PO was shooting at the jedi and apologizing after the shots were made. This reminded me of a discussion we had in class last week about minds and brains and if my brain was in someone elses body would I still be me? Like I said, I know it is random but it got me thinking.

I think that this class has been very hard to understand and get alot out of it. I thinka large factor has been that you have to try and cram so much information as you can in a total of three weeks. But I am glad that not every single class has been stricly lecture, I think that it woudl be much harder. Watching movies and having lcass discussions really helped spice class up and make it a little more insightful to the idea of philosophy.

I think this test will be a bit harder than the rest. There were less notes than any this time, which is hard to get the information to answer his study questions. Good luck everyone

The divine command theory is the view that moral actions are those which conform to God's will. I believe that when God put us on this earth he gave us values that he wanted us to follow. We have the choice to follow them or go against them. For example, charity is morally proper because God endorses it, by doing something of this sort you are conforming to God's will. It is at times though harder to maintain the will of God. But with God's help we can be morally good.

I noticed these past few weeks that there seems to be a decent amount of religious people in the class, not that you wouldn't expect it, because a lot of people do have religious values. As for the Divine Command Theory I can't go along with it the idea of a God "looking" down on us, seeing and knowing all that we do in order to judge us in the end as to where we will end up for eternity doesn't sit well to me. Personally, I believe that people are born with almost absolute no knowledge of ethics or how to behave. You can compare yourself to a person born in a different country and look at their beliefs and may think some are odd compared to yours, this of course is a result of culture, but to think that we are born with our ethic values pre-programmed into us doesn't sound right. So I would believe the existentialist path more than anything, with the idea that such things as murder and the idea that we work together are programmed into us by our genes, like many other animals in the world.

I disagree with the fact that there is a moral dimension to the universe. Morals seem like an evolutionary trait that humans developed along with society and culture. Morals developed in societies in order for that society to remain viable because, without them everyone would end up killing each other, stealing from each other and so on. In that sense other animals could have extremely crude morals making our ethical views just a much higher degree of morals

Out of all the movies that we have watched these last three weeks, this movie was the best! I liked the other movies and I saw how they related to the lectures, but I felt like they were topics that were to far abstract to relate too. This movie could relate to anyone. I have no remors for Judas. I could see if the affair happened once, but it went on for two years. I believe that after 26 years of marrigae, an affair could be worked out! He also got off scott free. Yes, he has to deal with the guilt, but she died. I hope he remembers her face eveyday looking up at him when she was lying down die on the ground. I really got a lot of when you went through the movie and picked out things that you thought were important and what we might of not picked out the first time we watched it. It is strange the things that you can miss the first time around. I would of never picked out the color skim, pink, that ran throughout the movie. You should definitly try and go through the movies like you did today,in the regular semesters. It was very helpful!

I believe completely in the Divine Command Theory. I believe God has set values that we are to follow. Like Euthyphro, I find it difficult to explain God's demands or my belief in God. I can feel that it is right and He is true. I believe we were all put on earth for a reason. Euthyphro was trying to explain piety to Socrates, but could not exactly explain it clearly. His explanation of "doing what is right", but not being sure if this was pleasing to ALL the gods, is what made Socrates place doubt in Euthyphro for his actions. I think Euthyphro was acting naturally for needing to punish his father for the inhumane act on the servant, but the father was punishing the servant for the killing of another. I think the father should have held the servant prisoner, but in a different manner. In my opinion, I think this is what Euthyphro was trying to accomplish for the act of his father (seek punishment).

I've never fully liked the idea of moral relativity. I believe there are certain basic ethics that are absolute, such as not killing people. From these basic core ethics, other ethics can be created, and those might differ from one society to another, or even one person to the next. Do other people in the class feel this way as well, and what do you see as being absolute core ethics?

I believe that Juddah is very unethical, b/c he reulted to murdering his mistress. He should have never let it happen or could've taken a different route to sole this. I believe another man would've worked b/c she seems to become attached easily. Also I believe that the other guy that is taping lester is unethical b/c he is seemingly making advances at his woman coworker. Both men are having serious relationship problems.

Am unsure of where the glasses,eyes and things of symbolism come in. the only thing i see is alot of ppl wearing glasses

I believe that ethics and morals are something that each individual defines themselves. not all believe that certain things are ethical or moral, so therefor I believe these things to be learned and depicted from person to person.