As German philosopher Georg Hegel believed, human history is characterized by the move towards greater freedom, rationality, and understanding. Faith in humanity is the idea that human beings have positive potential and can continue to improve and grow towards more enlightened, caring, peaceful, and educated societies. However, there has been a growing trend that has challenged this very idea and has been dominating social media as well as day-to-day-conversations. With all of the bad that has been going on around the world, and what seems to be the downfall of morality, people are beginning to lose faith in humanity. Although there seems to be a growing number of tragedies, ignorance, and evil in the world, the lack of faith in humanity could result in cynicism, which could lead to our ultimate downfall. To avoid this, people must acknowledge humanity’s altruism, and never lose the faith they have.
On December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza, age 20, guns down 20 children, ages 6 and 7, and six adults, school staff and faculty, before turning the gun on himself. The final count is 28 dead, including the shooter. On July 20, 2012, twelve people are killed and 58 are wounded in a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater screening of the new Batman film. The gunman is dressed head-to-toe in protective tactical gear, set off two devices of some kind before spraying the theater with bullets from an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one of two .40-caliber handguns police recovered at the scene. On April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon at 2:49 pm EDT, killing 3 people and injuring an estimated 264 others. The FBI took over...
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...tribute $2 million in aid for Colorado shooting victims. 26 July 2012. 30 April 2014. .
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David Hume is was a strong advocator and practitioner of a scientific and empirical way of thinking which is reflected in his philosophy. His skeptical philosophy was a 180 degree shift from the popular rational philosophy of the time period. Hume attempted to understand “human nature” through our psychological behaviors and patterns which, when analyzing Hume’s work, one can clearly see its relation to modern day psychology. Hume was a believer in that human behavior was influenced not by reason but by desire. He believed that “Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit—these passions, mixed in various proportions and distributed throughout society, are now (and from the beginning of the world always have been) the source of all the actions and projects that have ever...
America will never forget the atrocity that is Sandy Hook. Once known as a peaceful school, Sandy Hook Elementary is now known as the site of another school shooting, one which resulted in a young adult slaughtering twenty children and six adult staff members (Chaney and Robertson 74). The perpetrator, Adam Lanza, shocked the small town of Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. He acted on his frustrations; murdering his own mother and slaughtering innocent children and civilians. Bewildered, the nation began the attempt to search for clues explaining the perpetrator’s motives. As typical, investigators concluded that Lanza was another troubled young mind; he had a variant of Down syndrome which socially alienated him, and his single mother, an active gun enthusiast, seemed to only make matters worse by allowing Lanza to preoccupy himself with shooting range practice and video games.
Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism; it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood (“Jonathan Haidt Quotes.”). This quote sums the importance of morality perfectly. Even though morality may not be beneficial when the lives of the many out way the lives of the few or if it endangers your own well-being, we have an obligation to understand the morality of different people whether it’s socially, culturally, or religiously. When we fail to take into account these difference we breed conflict and eventually war.
On the morning of October 3, four people were shot within a span of approximately 2 hours in Aspen Hill, and other nearby areas in Montgomery County. Another was killed that evening in the District of Columbia, just over the border of Silver Spring. In each shooting, the victims were killed by a single bullet fired from some distance. The pattern was not detected until after the shootings occurred on October 3. Fear quickly spread throughout the community as news of the shootings circulated. Many parents went to pick up their children at school early, not allowing them to take a school bus or walk home alone. Montgomery County and District of Columbia schools declared a lockdown, wit...
A seemingly normal school day in Newtown, Connecticut, who knew that it would turn into one of the most devastating days of they would ever experience. About 2 years ago, students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut were involved in the most devastating event of the year. According to an article by the Huffington Post, a mentally troubled man in his twenties named Adam Lanza shot 20 children and six staff members, with his mother’s weapons. His mother had apparently grown up with guns and thought it would be good to have in their house. Prior to driving to the school, he even shot his mother, but his motive is unknown. He drove to the school leaving a 12-gauge shotgun in the car, walking towards the school, he shot through the front entrance. “Lanza moved toward two classrooms of kindergartners and first-graders,” police said. Within five minutes he managed to kill 20 students ages 6 and 7 and six adults. He had fired more than 150 shots from a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle. When police started to arrive he shot himself in the head, taking his own life. This incident was the deadliest mass shooting at a grade school in the US; in total 26 lives were lost.
David Hume’s two definitions of cause found in both A Treatise of Human Nature, and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding have been the center of much controversy in regards to his actual view of causation. Much of the debate centers on the lack of consistency between the two definitions and also with the definitions as a part of the greater text. As for the latter objection, much of the inconsistency can be remedied by sticking to the account presented in the Enquiry, as Hume makes explicit in the Author’s Advertisement that the Treatise was a “work which the Author [Hume] had projected before he left College, and which he wrote and published not long after. But not finding it successful, he was sensible of his error in going to the press to early, and he cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where some negligence in his former reasoning and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected.” (Hume 1772, xxxi) Generally the inconsistencies are cited from the Treatise, which fails to recognize the purpose of the Enquiry. This brings us to the possible tension between the two definitions. J.A. Robinson, for example, believes the two definitions cannot refer to the same thing. Don Garrett feels that the two definitions are possible, but only with further interpretation. I will argue that the tension arises from a possible forgetfulness on the part of the reader about Hume’s aims as a philosopher, and that Hume’s Enquiry stands on its own without any need for a critic’s extrapolations. To understand Hume’s interpretation of causation and the arguments against it, we must first follow the steps Hume took to come to his conclusion. This requires brief consideration of Hume’s copy princi...
Sometimes it is hard to be sure what conclusion to draw from a Humean analysis, and he is easy to misrepresent. This is partly because one argument he is engaged in may raise a number of related issues that he has dealt with elsewhere, and some of his points seem contradictory. My wish is to consider some of the possible readings of David Hume’s critique of causation, as it appears in Section VII of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, “On Necessary Connexion”, and their relation to the propositions of Section II, “Of the Origin of Ideas”, and Section X, “On Miracles”. I will offer criticisms and alternatives to Hume’s account(s) and conclude by picking which interpretation of Section VII best works for Hume, given certain arguments elsewhere in the Enquiry.
Pope John Paul II once said, “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.” (Fallible Blogma) Based on this significant and powerful quote, one can infer that faith and reason are directly associated and related. It can also be implied that the combination of faith and reason allows one to seek information and knowledge about truth and God; based on various class discussions and past academic teachings, it is understood that both faith and reason are the instruments that diverse parties are supposed to use on this search for truth and God. There are many stances and viewpoints on the issues of faith and reason. Some believe that both of these ideas cannot and should not be combined; these parties deem that faith and reason must be taken as merely separate entities. However, this writer does not understand why both entities cannot be combined; both terms are so closely compatible that it would make sense to combine the two for a common task. Based on various class discussions and readings, there are many philosophers and theologians who have certain opinions regarding faith, reason and their compatibility; these philosophers include Hildegard of Bingen, Ibn Rushd, Moses Maimonides, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The following essay will examine each of the previously stated philosopher’s viewpoints on faith and reason, and will essentially try to determine whether or not faith and reason are ultimately one in the same.
In David Hume’s “An Enquiring Concerning Human Understanding” he explains that our basic knowledge or the contents of the mind and the things we become immediately aware of are called perceptions. Hume uses the examples of pains, happiness, the feeling of anger and our imagination to give us a better understanding of perceptions. He then divides perceptions into two categories, ideas and impressions, which are differentiated by force and vivacity. In this sense impressions relate more to having feeling whereas ideas relate to thinking. Both impressions and ideas are then broken down into those of sensation and reflection, which relates back to feeling and thinking. In this paper, I will be going into detail to give a better understanding of
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