Life as we know it may or may not be. It’s a matter that has been touched by many. We simply answer the question of life by saying that because we think, we are alive. However, our knowledge of what is alive is in question too. The fulfillment of knowledge can sometimes introduce doubt into our minds. We begin to question proven theories, to discredit the basis of the foundation and even deny its existence.
Knowledge can be a great attainment but an excess of it can lead to doubt. Doubt forms because we tend to rely on our feelings to decide what is real and what is not, but why is that wrong? It’s simple, our feelings are not absolute. Although, everything we know we base off of our emotions and interactions with an object so why question it? We question our feelings because we cannot be sure if they are true or not. We try to justify them with claims so the feelings can be proven. Since our feelings fail to eliminate the doubt set in our minds because they are limited and undependable, we turn to reason through ideas to comprehend our thoughts. We become so unsure due to the factors that come into play when making a decision. Doubt can cause strong minds to flutter therefore making us question the credibility of our feelings. Allowing doubt to seep through, leads to a never ending battle of thoughts. Can I really trust my feelings? As you begin to reflect on your attitude towards the subject, you start to make assumptions about other’s attitudes on the subject. This reflection deepens the doubt in your once firm comprehension. Although we have reason to not doubt ourselves since we think we are right and others might also agree, it still does not answer the question of how do we know that that certain object is reality and who...
... middle of paper ...
...ify that we are in fact in a dream, it’s not so simple as to pinch yourself to wake up. Although, just because some stuff might not be real doesn’t mean all of them are. It’s true that if we are dreaming then how I can base my feelings on that since we could think that what we experience was real but it was in fact a dream. Or it could be that both premises are right and that we in actuality are awake and dreaming at the same time. Since stuff happens all the time in our mind and we think we are dreaming when we are wide awake, the only way to decide if it’s false is to have knowledge about it being true by verifying our actions with past actions to know which is correct. Philosophy means love of wisdom; some may call it the love of knowledge. Knowledge is ultimately used to achieve wisdom and enlightenment, but reason will undoubtedly be a big factor in our lives.
Premise 2: Hence, even when you are awake, you cannot tell whether or not you are dreaming.
Any truth that can exist in one can exist in the other. Because of this, there is no definite way to tell if an experience is dreamt or not. The arguments against this are purely speculative, based on personal experiences, and perhaps experiences of others, but that is not enough. Just because one person may not feel pain during a dream, signifying some sort of differentiation between the two states, does not mean another person doesn’t. Because all the evidence against this argument are purely speculative and circumstantial, it proves that we cannot prove consciousness at any given moment with Cartesian certainty. A waking state does exist, however, our ability to differentiate it from a sleeping state is impossible, leading to confusion about experiences. Having Cartesian certainty about whether or not we are dreaming at any given moment allows us to evaluate all the other aspects that might be skewed our findings. Because we may be asleep at any moment, who is to say our knowledge and experiences aren’t all dreamed? The brain, although a complex mechanism, is not complex to come up with the ideas that we have experienced within them. We may form new ideas based on our experiences, but the basis of it must have been experienced at one point or another. Our brain’s need reference for knowledge, and for us to know absolute truths, we need to understand that some truths may not be as
The play, Doubt: A Parable written by John Patrick Shanley, is based purely on uncertainty. Throughout the whole play, all I felt was uncertainty and I have still not come to a firm conclusion about what Father Flynn has done. There are many pieces of evidence proving his guilt and proving his innocence. I did enjoy reading the play and I think my favorite part about it is that I will never fully know what happened and who was right. I like being able to create my own ending to a book because you get to use your imagination. Today during the debate I started out as defending Father Flynn’s innocence. I do stand by what I was defending because there is no certain evidence against him that can prove him guilty; it is all based on assumption.
...ey are still dreaming. Once people begin to notice irregularities and they realized they a dreaming, “At that point many people temp to panic about it, others that already know about lucid dreaming may continue the dream”. (McNamara 1-2). In the short story “An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” the idea of Dream and Reality is exemplify in a different way. Peyton Farquhar has a dream in the last minutes of his life. At that moment he sees himself escaping from death, but he could not avoid reality. (Bierce 203)
In the first Meditation, Descartes states that our experience of the world cannot provide an assured foundation on which all knowledge can be based. Throughout life we often learn that what we have been taught are usually prejudices and a product of our environment or culture. This should make an individual question whether all things we think are obvious, might in fact be completely incorrect. This is the foundation for Descartes doubt, and the creation of his method of doubt. Descartes suggests that we use a method that will limit errors by tracing what we know back to a solid foundation of indubitable beliefs.
In the book "Meditations on First Philosophy", author talks about knowledge and doubt. He considers doubt and knowledge a very strong tool and thus, states a philosophical method which is actually an extraordinarily powerful investigation of mind, body and rationalism. He formulates six meditations in this book, where he first discards all of his previous beliefs where things are not completely certain and then he tries to build things that can be surely known. He believed that people should do their own discerning and by using the process of simple mathematics, they could proceed on a path to an unquestioned knowledge. He wrote these meditations in a way supposing that he has meditated for six days, referring each last meditation as ‘yesterday’.
Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
The knowledge question “To what extent do we trust the opinions of experts in searching for knowledge” is relevant to our daily lives because we rely on them for our decision making and issues regarding life and death. It is important that we are aware of both arguments of the same issue so we’ll be conscious of both opinions and using both our knowledge and belief, form knowledge.
It might be thought that the first task in considering the question of the `Meaning of Life' is to define the key terms: `Life' and `Meaning'. However, the meanings of `Meaning' are many; and `Life' itself could be seen as not so much a separate entity, but rather, the totality of those meanings to which I have alluded. Anyway, I shall take `Life' in this context to mean HUMAN life, and the meaning of this life as, specifically, the condition of our existence so far as we bring this into question.
In “Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and the Matrix”, Christopher Grau explains Rene Descartes argument in Meditation. What one may interpret as reality may not be more than a figment of one’s imagination. One argument that Grau points out in Descartes essay is how one knows that what one think is an everyday experience awake is not all a part of a hallucination. He uses the example of dreams to draw a conclusion about is claim based on experiences one would experience with dreaming. He asserts that there are times when one wake up from a dream that seems to be “vivid and realistic” however soon finds that it was not. The experience of reality in the dream was all a part of the mind. If dreams seem to be reality and one would not have any concept that one is dreaming how does one know that one is not dreaming now? Descartes point is that one cannot justify reality in the sense that one could be dreaming right at this moment and not know therefore one cannot trust the brain as an indicator of what is reality.
...genuine. Nevertheless, the degree of authenticity of knowledge has no effect on the pursuit of knowledge, and the statement that emotion and logic are all integrated into sense perception remains true for the pursuit of knowledge. It is the ongoing pursuit of knowledge that is relevant, and not the actual facts and knowledge itself.
What does it mean to be alive and what is the difference between the living and the dead? Ever wondered how the life originated on earth or our planet? It feels amazing when you knew that there is more galaxy around the world than salt in the sea and there is only one life on one planet earth. But how did it happen How did this miracle thing happened. It all happened around 1.3 billion years ago the first origin of life on earth. This is a slow process and it took thousands of years to complete. The evolutionist theory suggests that the life originated from simple atom like carbon, nitrogen. They react to under great pressure to form a single cell and evolve from there to become an organism.
The universe, and what it means to be alive is almost impossible to define; yet that does not stop humanity from trying. “Lonergan’s philosophy of the human person reveals that being human means having an unlimited number and variety of questions about life and the universe.” (Morgan, 1996). There is no limit on the number and variety of questions the human person will ask, "the most subversive people are those who ask questions” (Gaarder), as a result there are many varied and opinionated answers. This essay will explore three different theories on how one might find answers to life's ultimate questions. At one point or another, every human being has asked the question why: Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is the point? It is in our nature as human beings to reason, to think, to ask, it is what separates us from the rest of creation, and with this ability to reason, we are left with one question: Why? Throughout history many have tried to answer this question, some have come to the conclusion that meaning is found through God, and one’s faith. Others feel that life begins meaningless, and it is up to the individual to give life meaning; then there are those who believe that life has no meaning, and we are all essentially, just waiting to die, "The meaning of life is that it ends." (Kafka).
Carl Sagan's The Fine Art of Baloney Detection depicts the importance of thinking skeptically before new ideas can be accepted (Sagan, 1997). Skeptical thinking pertains to our ability to distinguish what is true from what is false in some sort of logical argument or idea. Sagan promotes nine tools for this type of thinking, six of which I believe are the most useful will be discussed throughout this essay.
The abstract idea of life cannot be explained by such simple ideas as being animated, breathing, or speaking. Ordinary machines in this century can perform all of these basic functions. The quandary with defining death is not as abstract and elusive as that of life. The problem of defining life and death has plagued philosophers and the religious bodies for thousands of years for one reason; each philosophy or religion has tried to define the meaning of life and death from only their certain perspective. The seemingly appropriate approach to this problem would be to understand the ideas presented in various philosophies and religions and through this knowledge create a new definition for each idea of life and death. The movie Blade Runner has taken this exact approach in its attempt to finally define life and death in a logical and un-spiritual manner. By taking the position that death is a concrete idea that can be explained, Blade Runner accomplishes the task of interpreting the idea of life in terms death. Through this approach, the meaning of life is redefined to accommodate for the existence of the replicants. Also, as a result of this novel notion of life, it is apparent that humans and replicants never actually live, even though they are alive.