Week 4: Pragmatism/Feminist Epestimology

I am agreeing with the philosophy of Pragmatism and Liberal feminist. Although it is obvious male and female physiological biological make up is different (eg. woman bare children, men on average have larger in mass). However I do feel that men and women should be equal in social structure and intellectual structures. Women should have the right to voice their opinions about their ideas of philosophy and be taken equally serious as to their male counterpart. I don't agree totally with the idea of "radical feminists". If they want to restructure the way "things should be" because it was male driven for a long time, with the idea of liberal feminist that should not be a problem since men and women would be equal, to explore ideas and make changes together.

I can strongly relate with pragmatism because the ideas of beliefs and experience correspond to each other for me. However as with many different ideas of philosophy I don't feel that one type is solely responsible for humans obtaining truth and knowledge.

Knowledge to me is information that has been transferred either from another individual, object, or obtained by oneself. I feel that it doesn't have to be true, as long as its not deliberately conveyed with deception.

I say it doesn't have to be true because if a person acts upon "false" knowledge, and evidently is effected by it they can make a their own judgment as to whether that piece of knowledge was true, useful... etc..

Week 3 Empiricism

Empiricist view about our knowledge coming from our senses, make sense (no pun). If you take a new born child one can assume that its cold therefore its crying or its trying to get the fluids out of its lungs, therefore it’s crying. Or when hunger is felt babies may cry. With food, all the different tastes and sensations of eating are built. I believe there is a correlation between the body’s need to stay alive, our senses that help us figure out how to be alive, and the knowledge built from experiences from our senses. I guess to just say knowledge is based on our senses is incorrect. It is the “thing/feeling/instinct” that created the senses. Is physiological or something greater?

Week 2: Methodological Skeptism

I feel that methodological skepticism is a extreme but useful way of analyzing truths. It’s effective in a sense that we all practice methodological skepticism in our daily lives. On a small scale we can take the weather forecast we all look for it but there are always doubts about it. We can hope the prediction is true but cannot be certain. Therefore we don’t have real knowledge about it. Descartes personal dealing with methodological skepticism is extreme in doubting and questioning every single thing in this world, but I feel that its good practice to test his method to make it work in other issues, ideas, situations in life.

I believe that there is no single method in seeking truth. Methodological Skepticism is only another tool to help one heighten awareness towards the truth.

Week 1 Allegory of the Cave

Refereing to Allegory of the Cave, I feel that we are all like the prisoners in the cave. If you base this Allegory to society in America you can see the resemblance. With advancing technology we are able to access information in many ways. This information is coming at us so fast that sometimes we don't have choice but to submerse by it.

In Allegory of the Cave the prisoners had it easy by only viewing what is in front of them of just shadows and echos. In modern day our ideas about our wants and needs are driven by outer forces such as advertisements, marketing firms, sights and sounds. We are bombarded with these "images". Its not as simple as just a shadow, we come a long way from shadows in a cave we have television, radio, internet, newspapers, movies, magazines, billboards, and music. The news outlets are controlled by large corporations with ties to heavy political donations to politicians. Its obvious that one should question if what we feel is "real" or have we become manipulated.

I feel that philosophy will bring the subject to the table about how do we think and feel as a person. To try to pause for a second in these fast moving times and think about what is real. One's personal goals in life and reason for living.

It feel that Socrates has the right to be pessimistic about life without philosophy because you need to show the seriousness of the situation. A world of people possibly going on with their daily lives totatlly unaware of the meaning of freedom and whats real.