Bartleby is a lazy student who refuses to study simply because he would prefer not. Although his teacher, Mr. Smith, automatically assumes that Bartleby failed the final exam he just took, Mr. Smith could have reasoned that he has sufficient evidence to support his belief. Mr. Smith has seen that Bartleby shows little interest in the class, that he has poor study habits and has consistently failed all his previous exams, and that just about enough questions were incorrect on the portion of the exam that Mr. Smith did have time to grade to warrant a failing grade. But because final grades are due and Mr. Smith runs out of time to finish grading, he marks an ‘F’ on Bartleby’s test without actually calculating the score or even realizing that he has sufficient evidence to support his belief that Bartleby failed. Later, Mr. Smith comes to find out that his belief was true, thus once again confirming Mr. Smith’s time-tested bias that students who have failed in the past are perpetual failures. Was Mr. Smith’s belief justified?
Intuitively, we would want to say that it isn’t, because his belief is grounded in, or caused by, his bias against Bartleby. The problem is that both rigidly Internalist, like Access Internalism, and rigidly Externalist accounts of justification, like Reliabilism, have difficulties with showing how bias can disqualify a seemingly justified belief. In what follows, I will use Matthias Steup’s account, “A Defense of Internalism”[1], to explain Access Internalism and then use the scenario just presented to show how the justificatory requirements of Access Internalism are incompatible with the findings of current psychological research on how most beliefs are actually acquired and justified. Next I will briefly discuss how a much weaker form of Internalism with an Externalist character, Psychological Internalism, can avoid the problems of Access Internalism, but at the cost of missing out on the main benefits of both strongly Internalist and strongly externalist theories. Next I will use Alvin Goldman’s article, “Reliabilism: What is Justified Belief?”[2] to explain the basic ideas of Reliabilist Externalism and again use the Bartleby situation to draw out the inconsistencies between the Reliabilist requirements of justification and our normative intuitions of what justification ought to be.
Furthermore, the authors aim to unfold the scientific logic of their analysis of the effects of hidden biases so people will be “better able to achieve the alignment,” between their behavior and intentions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013) preface
Overall, in these fairy tales Carter succeeds in delivering a feminist message and provides a counter argument for the moral message of traditional fairy tales in which young women were encouraged to remain obedient and pure. Unlike in earlier fairy tales, in these stories it is the straying from the path that results in transformation and releases women from the subjugation that women over history have been subjected to.
Rene Descartes and David Hume lived in two completely different time periods, yet they shared interest in some of the same philosophical categories. Could animals reason? How did humans expand their knowledge compared to animals? Questions like these were answered both by Descartes and Hume even though they had two opposing views. Descartes was the first to address the questions about animal instincts, and later on Hume set out to refute some of his ideas.
A fairytale is a fictional fantasy fable that passes through generations of children as source of interest to them. Though used for the intent of entertainment, fairytales often indirectly advocate a moral or message to readers (whom are usually children), in hopes that they will grow up to apply these ethics and lead a righteous life. This criteria, however, often originates from the occurrence of a magical transformation; it is this paranormality that introduces the characters of the story to a side of life far from what they have grown to know and learn to adapt to the dramatic amend in their life. This is evident in the characters in world-renowned tales such as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.
Tatar, Maria. Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992. Print.
Blind faith is hard for many. Clifford takes the side of Evidentialism, which is the assertion t
In Peirce’s work, Fixation of Belief, he talks about the many methods people go through to come to secure beliefs. He states that the best way for fixing a belief is the scientific method. Throughout the passage, it shows how people uses these methods to fixate on one and how all these methods don’t work because of the external stimuli. Plato similarly choses one of the four methods to test and shows its flaws in the method. I myself also go through these methods to find the basis for the security of my own personal beliefs.
a) Christians believe many different things about God’s nature; due to the huge spectrum of Christians that there are. However, as a general rule they perceive God as being one of the following four things:
In Feminism and Fairy Tales, Karen E. Rowe asserts that “popular folktales” have “shaped our romantic expectations” and “illuminate psychic ambiguities which often confound contemporary women.” She believes that “portrayals of adolescent waiting and dreaming, patterns of double enchantment, and romanticizations of marriage contribute to the potency of fairy tales” makes “many readers discount obvious fantasy elements and fall prey to more subtle paradigms through identification with the heroine.” As a result, Karen Rowe contends “subconsciously women may transfer from fairy tales into real life cultural norms which exalt passivity, dependency, and self-sacrifice as a female’s cardinal virtues suggest that culture’s very survival depends upon a woman’s acceptance of roles which relegate her to motherhood and domesticity.” It is undeniable that numerous folk tales implant male chauvinism into women’s minds and thus convey an idea that woman should obey and depend on men. However, Rowe neglects the aspect that many other folk tales, on the contrary, disclose the evil and vulnerable sides of man and marriage and thus encourage women to rely on their own intelligence and courage other than subordinating to man. The Fairy tales “Beauty and Beast” and “Fowler’s Fowl” challenge Rowe’s thesis to some extent and exemplify that some fairy tales motivate women to be intelligent and courageous and to challenge patriarchy.
Fairy tales portray wonderful, elaborate, and colorful worlds as well as chilling, frightening, dark worlds in which ugly beasts are transformed into princes and evil persons are turned to stones and good persons back to flesh (Guroian). Fairytales have long been a part of our world and have taken several forms ranging from simple bedtime stories to intricate plays, musicals, and movies. However, these seemingly simple stories are about much more than pixie dust and poisoned apples. One could compare fairytales to the new Chef Boyardee; Chef Boyardee hides vegetables in its ravioli while fairytales hide society’s morals and many life lessons in these outwardly simple children stories. Because of this fairytales have long been instruments used to instruct children on the morals of their culture. They use stories to teach children that the rude and cruel do not succeed in life in the long run. They teach children that they should strive to be kind, caring, and giving like the longsuffering protagonists of the fairytale stories. Also, they teach that good does ultimately defeat evil. Fairy tales are not just simple bedtime stories; they have long been introducing cultural moral values into young children.
They serve many purposes, as both demonstrated by Lurie’s article “What Fairy Tales Tell Us,” as well as what is investigated in this paper. Nevertheless, one must keep in mind how dated of many of these stories are; what some may view as having a deeper meaning, such as abuse, may also be reflecting the habits and occurrences of the time period, such as seen in “Hansel and Gretel.” That is not to say, however, that these stories are to be taken lightly. Ostensibly, romantic tales where true love is apparently the only motive may actually be harbouring important ethics and beliefs. This can be seen in the tale of Sleeping Beauty; criticized in modern times for being a feminist’s nightmare, the tale actually consists of genuine messages about the world. It takes insipid daily lessons and turns them into something magical, or, more eloquently, “the fairy tale survives because it presents experience in vivid symbolic form”
One argues that today we have a crisis of belief, not a crisis of faith. To explain this crisis, I will briefly examine the relationship between faith and belief, explain why cultural shift is important to note when trying to understand religious issues, go into detail on the three hallmarks of each of the two cultures by showing how they compare to each other, show how Tillich’s notion of correlation deals with this idea of culture and a crisis of belief, and explain how Marsh’s notion of a “theology of negotiation” (33) fits with Lonergan’s definition and allows him to argue that film can help us raise theological questions.
This paper will dispute that scientific beliefs are not the right way to accept a belief and it will question if we should let one accept their rights to their own beliefs. In Williams James article Will to Believe, we accept his perspective on how we set and fix our beliefs. This paper will first outline his overview on the argument that someone does not choose their belief but rather one just has them. Following, it will outline my perspective on how we set our beliefs and agreement with purse. Then it will explain how other methodologies such as science cannot conclude to one’s true beliefs. Science has been seen as a way to perceive life and taken to consideration as the truth. This paper should conclude that humans define ourselves by
Fairy tales have been part of our lives ever since we were young children. We all either grew up watching Disney renditions of fairy tales, or we had storybooks filled with vivid pictures of a tale. Fairy tales are so important in our culture that it would be difficult to find someone who has not heard of Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, or other fairy tale protagonists. Interestingly enough, fairy tales have been a very integral part of Western culture since the time they were written. Fairy tale writers, such as Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers, revolutionized culture in the 17th and 18th centuries with their writings. Not only did these writers write these tales for entertainment, but they also accomplished to influence the
By exposing the role of fairy tales in the cultural struggle over gender, feminism transformed fairy-tale studies and sparked a debate that would change the way society thinks about fairy tales and the words. “Fairy Tales and Feminism.” Project MUSE -, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/31411.