Examples Of Personal Dilemmas

951 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Parents and teenagers relationship importance

The greatest personal dilemma that I have ever struggled with was a pursuing a relationship with a girl despite my religion’s strict forbidding of dating. My religion, Islam, only permits dating in the presence of one of either parents of the couple. This way, physical and verbal interaction would be appropriate. I fell in love with this girl my freshmen and I was with her till October of my senior year. To resolve this situation I told my parents about it one month into it. My religious guilt seems to be linked with my parents’ approval so if they knew about my sins, I somehow felt better. They forbid me from continuing the relationship because of the war between our country and her country.
I made believe that I agreed with them. Secretly, however, I continued to see this girl for three years. This built more guilt on me and eventually I had to …show more content…

Well, the way I perceived the situation is what led to me having certain emotions. Looking at a beautiful girl and trying to think without using emotion was almost impossible for me. I have heard people describe this as thinking with your heart instead of your mind. Regardless of the complicated emotions we went through, I think it is safe to say that my “heart” loved her. Regarding thinking with different parts that make up a person, Bordo mentions Descartes’s theory of prejudice. Descartes seems to think that what stands in the way of “clear and distinct perception” is prejudice (Bordo, 681). Bordo further breaks this down a little further to prejudice of “seeing” with one’s body rather than one’s mind” (Bordo 681). This completely applies to me as I didn’t use reason in my romantic relationship. Bordo, however, believes that the body is just as important as the mind. She believes Descartes is misunderstood in his claims (Bordo

Show More
Related

  • Rene Descartes Wax Argument

    663 Words  | 2 Pages

    Our minds are very complex. They allow us to imagine and believe things greater than we can sense. They allow us to be innovative and cutting edge. We are only limited to what can be understood by the mind. The possibilities are endless. This is what Descartes came to realize by saying “I now know that even bodies are not, properly speaking perceived by the senses or by the faculty of imagination, but by the intellect alone, and that they are not perceived through their being touched or seen but through their being understood.” His argument is sound and structured in a foundationalist way so that the understanding of his overall point that the mind and body are not always experiencing the same things, therefore the mind is not limited to the

    Read More

  • Interpreting The Matrix through Descartes’s Philosophy

    2044 Words  | 5 Pages

    Many ancient philosophers, including Plato, explored metaphysics in relation to reality before Descartes’s in-depth questioning of the subject. However, Descartes’s views on mind/body dualism differ greatly from Plato’s. As Marleen Rozemond (author of Descartes's Dualism) points out, Plato believes that the body is simply a vessel for the soul to use, while Descartes provides proof that the body and soul are interconnected (172). One does not simply use the other; though they are separate, the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind. Cartesian dualism tells us that "although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or arm or any other part of the body is cut off, nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind" (414). However, Descartes also states that "nature also teaches me by . . . [sensations] that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit" (412). Descartes shows through his dualism that though the mind and body are separate entities, they are connected and reliant on one another. This is one key idea that separates Descartes from great thinkers like Plato. Add another Rozemond quote.

    Read More

  • The Mind as a Function of the Body by Richard Taylor

    1003 Words  | 3 Pages

    Richard Taylor explained why the body and the mind are one, and why they are not two separate substances. In the article “The Mind as a Function of the Body”, Taylor divides his article in a number of sections and explains clearly why dualism, or the theory that the mind and the body are separate is not conceivable. In one of these sections it is explained in detail the origin of why some philosophers and people believe in dualist metaphysics. As stated by Taylor “when we form an idea of a body or a physical object, what is most likely to come to mind is not some person or animal but something much simpler, such as a stone or a marble”(133). The human has the tendency to believe a physical object as simple, and not containing anything complex. A problem with believing this is that unlike a stone or a marble a human (or an animal) has a brain and the body is composed of living cells (excluding dead skin cells, hair, and nails which are dead cells). The f...

    Read More

  • Logical Behaviorism Vs Dualism

    815 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are many theories about the mind and body. Many philosophers argue whether the mind and body are two separate entities or are in fact one thing. There are five main arguments for this accounts they are, dualism, logical behaviorism, methodological behaviorism, identity-theory, and lastly functualism. There are many similarities and differences between these five theories. Dualism is the main focus that I will be recounting, then comparing and contrasting it against identity-theory and logical behaviorism.

    Read More

  • Circumstance Obstacle Or Conflict In Your Life

    578 Words  | 2 Pages

    Describe a circumstance, obstacle or conflict in your life, and the skills and resources you used to resolve it. Did it change you? If so, how?

    Read More

  • Rene Descartes, Nagel And Plato's Approach To Understanding The Difference Between Soul And Soul

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    Despite having contrary qualities and fundamentally opposing natures, the mind and body are intertwined and interact with one another. Interactive dualism hold the idea that the mind is eternal and has the ability to exist apart from the body. Descartes holds the idea that if the physical realm in which the body material body exists ceased to exist, the mind would still be. However, if a circumstance arose which annihilated his ability to think, he would cease to exist. Interactive dualism explores the idea that the body is simply an extension of the forms of the individual in the physical world, that the demise of the material body does not render its fundamental nature to be obsolete. Interactive dualism can seem to diminish the importance of the material body, but it does not. Descartes states that the mind and body are united and interact so closely that it seems to create one whole. This unity is expressed by when the physical body experiences pain. If the mind simply related to the body in the manner a sailor relates to a ship, the mind would simply perceive pain through

    Read More

  • Descartes Sixth Meditation

    1138 Words  | 3 Pages

    rity and distinction, but we can conclude what Descartes means. He is saying that we can be sure that these primary qualities exist in bodies in the same way that they do in our ideas of bodies. This cannot be claimed for qualities such as heat, color, taste and smell, of which our ideas are so confused and vague that we must always reserve judgment. This can be seen in the wax example. Do you think that Descartes qualifies to your satisfaction that the mind and body are separate from each other?

    Read More

  • Personal Writing: Fragment - Changes In Life

    1142 Words  | 3 Pages

    don't really know what it was that started this thing between me and my parents

    Read More

  • Cartesian Dualism vs Logical Behaviorism

    1489 Words  | 3 Pages

    René Descartes was the 17th century, French philosopher responsible for many well-known philosophical arguments, such as Cartesian dualism. Briefly discussed previously, according to dualism, brains and the bodies are physical things; the mind, which is a nonphysical object, is distinct from both the brain and from all other body parts (Sober 204). Sober makes a point to note Descartes never denied that there are causal interactions between mental and physical aspects (such as medication healing ailments), and this recognition di...

    Read More

  • Analysis of Descartes’ Mind/Body Distinction

    1172 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the ways in which Descartes attempts to prove that the mind is distinct from the body is through his claim that the mind occupies no physical space and is an entity with which people think, while the body is a physical entity and cannot serve as a mechanism for thought. [1]

    Read More

  • History of Psychology

    1357 Words  | 3 Pages

    While the great philosophical distinction between mind and body in western thought can be traced to the Greeks, it is to the influential work of René Descartes, French mathematician, philosopher, and physiologist, that we owe the first systematic account of the mind/body relationship. As the 19th century progressed, the problem of the relationship of mind to brain became ever more pressing.

    Read More

  • Descartes: Relationship Between Mind and Body

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    Descartes argues that the mind and body can be thought of as separate substances. Descartes writes “I have a body that is very closely joined to me, nevertheless, because … I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am merely a thinking thing and not an extended thing and because … I have a distinct idea of a body, insofar as it is merely an extended thing and not a thinking thing, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it” ( Descartes 50). With this quote, Descartes is saying that the mind and body are separate because he has two distinct ideas of the body and the mind and the body is not a thinking thing as he is but an extended substance. Another point to Descartes argument is that the mind and body are different due to one being indivisible and the other being divisible. Descartes writes “a body, by its very nature, is always divisible. On the other hand, the mind is utterly indivisible” (53). Here is saying that there are ...

    Read More

  • Teenage Dating Relationships Essay

    1645 Words  | 4 Pages

    For example, if your significant other cheated on you and your parents found out about it and do not approve with you ever getting back with that person because of what they did. No matter how many times your parents tell you not to see nor communicate with that person, but you still want to be with them, at the end of the day you’re not going to care what your parents think or say about the situation because you think that they just do not understand or are just overreacting. You parents should work as mentors in your relationship; they should only give you their opinion on it but should not get in between. If you tell your parents that you and that other person are communicating or seeing each other again after what happened, the only thing that they are going to do is bash the other person because of the situation, but it won’t matter because if you want to be with that person you’re going to do what you want to do. Your decision is your decision, whether you get back with that person should only be yours and not your parents. If it works out then good for you, but if becomes another heartbreak then you and especially your parents should just take it as a lesson

    Read More

  • Cartesian Dualism and Gilbert Ryle

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...nclude, Ryle is correct in his challenge of Descartes’ Cartesian dualism, the mind and body are not two separate parts as dictated by dualist, rather the working of the mind are not distinct from the body. As a result, an observer can understand the mind of another through the actions of the body. It is the combination that makes up a human, human, as they are one and the same.

    Read More

  • Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949) is a critique of the notion that the mind is distinct from the body, and is a rejection of the philosophical theory that mental states are distinct from physical states. Ryle argues that the traditional approach to the relation of mind and body (i.e., the approach which is taken by the philosophy of Descartes) assumes that there is a basic distinction between Mind and Matter. According to Ryle, this assumption is a basic 'category-mistake,' because it attempts to analyze the relation betwen 'mind' and 'body' as if they were terms of the same logical category. Furthermore, Ryle argues that traditional Idealism makes a basic 'category-mistake' by trying to reduce physical reality to the same status as mental reality, and that Materialism makes a basic 'category-mistake' by trying to reduce mental reality to the same status as physical reality.

    Read More

More about Examples Of Personal Dilemmas

Open Document