Loyalty – Tori Wunder

Tori had an interesting presentation about a unique topic, loyalty. In he presentation, there are two kinds of loyalty: Loyalty which is unconditional and faithfulness which is conditional. What this means is that when someone is truely loyal to someone or something else, their trust and following is always their, no matter what, and they will do all they can to help that person or cause. On the other hand, faithfulness is conditional and can be affected. Tori also presented views of many philosophers, such as Josiah Royce. He was an American philosopher who believed loyalty was a commitment to your community, friends, or to a good cause. Furthermore, she provided examples of loyalty as it has appeared in literature, such as Beowulf.

Although loyalty is definitely a philosophical topic, I believe it can ben better defined than other abstract concepts like love. However, there is still a lot to think about, such as: why do people demonstrate loyalty to other people or causes, even to the point where they would give up their own life to protect them? One example of unconditional loyalty to a cause is the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The people who signed it were completely loyal to the cuase because they knew that if they were captured they would be killed for treason.

Love – Corinne Geoffrin & Patty Snider

Their presentation dealt with the concept of love and tried to provide information and opinions about what it is and what the definition of it could be. Corinne made a very good video with several movie, television, and documentary clips mixed in with interviews of her own friends. I didn’t get much time to copy complete quotes down and their were a lot but generally they said things like “love is the act of putting someone else’s needs before you’re own.”

I feel that love is a very hard to define world or feeling. It means different things for all kinds of people and each person may not really know what it is until they feel it. There are all kinds of love though. Some people say the feelings of love are caused by chemicals. This is true, but I believe it goes much deeper than that. When someone says they love someone, they could say they love a friend, a family member, or a significant other. I believe that all these relationships have different kinds of ways that a single person experiences love. Love for a friend is a feeling of trust and even dependancy that is reciprocal between two friends. This is strengthened by the events that two friends experience together and the good and bad times they have. Love for a family member is somewhat similar, but also much different. Personally, I do not always enjoy spending time with my family and more times than not they annoy me, but I still love them. It is a matter of unconditional respect and compassion that you share with people in your families. For example, my little brother is not my favorite person in the world, and I can be mean to him a lot, but ultimately I want to help him and make sure he is happy. Finally, love for a significant other in a relationship is what most people think of when they hear the word love, and in my opinion is the deepest kind of love and the hardest to define. A lot of people nowadays might even say love doesn’t really exist, or last for that matter. In my opinion though, I believe it does exist, and I think it can best be described by a point in a relationship where one person would do anything for their partner and when they make each other much happier by being together and taking on life together with someone they can trust.

Fear – Laura Byrne

In Laura’s presentation on fear, she explained the different kinds of fear thought to exist. Internal fear is a fear that derives from within a person’s self. Examples of this being paranoia or low self-esteem. External fear is fear that derives from things happening around a person, like a fear of falling if they are high up in the air, or the fear of drowning while they are swimming. Fear is best defined as the concept of anticipating bad events that could happen and the effect those thoughts have on a person and their emotions.

I think that fear, while not as difficult to explain as love, is a hard concept to completely understand or define. However, like Laura said in her presentation, fear is the anticipation of something bad happening. I think there are other concepts that describe how a person feels when something bad IS happening. I would call this terror. For example, someone is hiking along a path that is right next to a tall cliff. They would probably have a sense of fear of falling and hurting themselves or dying. If in this situation that person did slip and fall off the cliff, while they are falling they would experience terror, a feeling that a person gets when they are aware of something terrible happening to them.

Conciousness – Thomas Basine

The main question that Thomas brought up in his presentation was: is consciousness the distinction between being alive and not being alive? However, there were other topics as well, such as: What is consciousness?; or, Does being conscious go hand in hand with being self-aware?

I’d say that just because some living thing may not be conscious does not mean it is not alive. For example, for what we know, plants are not conscious, but they are still living things. Also, we would not say that someone who has been rendered unconscious is dead. However, if, for example, someone was on life support and they cannot speak or move yet they still have vital signs, many people would consider them dead, or call them a “vegetable” or braindead. Therefore, I think that consciousness does not determine if someone or something is alive or not, but rather their quality of life and ability to live.

Today I am exploring the question: Why do people get married? To explain further what I wanted to research about the question was the significance of marriage in today’s modern world. Before marrying out of love, marriage was a way to protect property or a family, or in some cases, increase the amount of property or money that one had (usually only in the case of the male). Another original reason for marriage was its significance as a religious ceremony. From that I ask myself, why do people who are not religious, or may even be atheist, get married? It seems like there is no reason for it. To answer this question, I looked up modern reasons for why people want to get married.

1. Lifelong companionship with a person one loves.

2. To be able to have children in a way that is the social norm.

3. Financial stability. If a couple also have children, it is best that they are married as this is the best way for them to cooperatively provide for their children.

4. Religious Reasons. “In prior, highly religious eras, marriage’s role as a sacrament (Catholicism), a Biblical requirement that also constitutes the highest form of happiness (Judaism) or a covenant before God (Protestantism), meant that marriage was incumbent upon people of faith.  In other words, people got married because God said they should – a divine mandate that was in and of itself a sufficient reason for marriage.” (http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/modern_love_american_style.html)

These are four general reasons for why people get married today that I put together and certain people may get married for one or several of these reasons.

Today with the small amount of time we had today in class, I decided to research the different chemicals and reactions  in our body that scientists or proponents of “love as a feeling caused by chemicals” say cause the feelings and emotions we experience and associate with love. There seem to be many different chamicals which scientists claim cause feelings associated with different experiences in an interpersonal relationship.

Phenyl Ethylamine – (aka the love drug) produced by the brain when one first meets someone they are attracted to.

Dopamine – caused by thinking loving thoughts about another. It makes one want to touch another or be close to them.

Norepinephren – similar effects as dopamine.

Serotonin – produces a feeling of relaxation and comfortablility that comes after one person has touched another or is comfortbale being around them.

Oxytocin – helps people feel connected to those that they touch regularly, such as spouses or members of a family.

Vasopressin – helps associate feelings with memories, further connecting people to the ones they love. Scientists say this is one chemical that gives humans the ability to have monogamous relationships (staying with one partner for a long time).

Source:

http://www.essortment.com/love-just-chemical-reaction-36559.html

For my independent project, I was interested in exploring different relationship and moral norms. I am going to try to answer questions like: is love a real feeling or just something chemical related?; Why do people get married?; and then other similar questions. What I researched today was the idea and philosophy of love. I learned that the idea of  marriage based on love or consent did not really come around until about 12th century in English culture. Before that, in almost every culture, marriage was a legal way of protecting property, a way to continue a family name, or other similar issues. Also, the word ”love”, coming from the Germanic forms of the Sanskrit “lubh” (a word for desire),  has a very general meaning and therefore creates discrepencies in priority of definition. To better organize the meaning of love, it is broken down into three other greek terms: eros, philia, and agape. Eros pertains to a passionate, intense desire for something or sexual desire. Philia means a fondness or appreciation for another pertaining to friendship and family. Agape is described as the love God has for people and vis versa.

I plan to use this information to better describe love to the audience as what it means to our society today and the defenition of love. It will be a good, factual point to start from and then I came break into the more philosophical side and why and/or how we feel love.

With all of today’s modern technology like cellphones, laptops, iPods, and the internet, it is easy to always be busy or be connected to other people. The problem with this is that it is extremely distracting when someone is trying to complete work. Many students claim that they are excellent multitaskers and can get work done while doing other things like Facebook or listening to music. However, in the video we watched produced by PBS, researchers found that even brilliant MIT students were terrible at multitasking, despite them claiming they were good at it. Furthermore, these distractions bring down the quality of the work being done, and also greatly extends the amount of time it takes to get a task done. Personally, I have caught myself many times being sidetracked by Facebook or Google while trying to do work on the computer.

I have quite a problem with blogging. It is very hard to find topics to write about when it has to be related to class. Also, it is honestly the last thing on my mind, therefore usually forgotten. When I do remember, it’s at around 1 to 2 in the morning after I have finished all my other work and studying after a long day of school and track. Blogging forces me to stay up late at night and therefore forces me to fall asleep in philosophy class. This seems like the only reasonable place to sleep since the time I am “awake” is spent working on philosophy and blogging.

The touchstone topic that we discussed last Friday was similar to the topic stated in the question above. My belief is that everyone has a reason for doing anything, good or bad. I would say that I am generally a good person and I try my best to think about how my actions will affect others before I commit them. For example, I usually would not steal something from someone even if I knew I would get away with it because I know whatever I took would probably be missed by the rightful owner and they would be upset. However, I wouldn’t feel too guilty about stealing something from a large company like Wal-Mart because I know that I’m really not hurting any one person. Most people would probably act and think similar to this, but there are also other factors to put it. Some people may do good things (or not do bad things) only because they fear punishment. This good be direct punishment like a fine or getting arrested, or it can even be something more idealistic like punishment from God.

I think that the recent philosophy day was a success. We had a good turnout of students and guests, all who added valuable ideas and points to each of the conversations. Conversations usually deviated from the original topic, but nothing that was discussed was irrelevant. Also, everything we talked about was very interesting and I liked seeing the differences in opinion between kids and adults.

Personally, I believe genius is an ambiguous adjective, or a loosely used noun, used to describe person another person believes to be extraordinarily smart or talented. I do not believe there is a level one can reach where they are from that point on a genius. Instead, like I said before, it is a very general description. However, if I had to create a standard for genius, I would say that one would have to be way beyond the average person either in intelligence or talent which would have to be proved by monumental and original ideas or actions. For example, I would recognize Da Vinci as a genius because of his completely original work and ideas which were centuries ahead of his time. Living in the 15th century he already had though of and drawn up blueprints for helicopters and many other inventions that were just recently created.

This topic came up at the end of our class today since it was discussed by one of the characters in walking life. I have always been fascinated by the concept of dreaming and lucid dreaming, which is when the person having the dream has the ability to control their dreams and also may know that they are dreaming. When it was discussed in the movie, one statement (I don’t have the exact quote) that piqued my interest was that which one man said how dreams and what we consider reality really have so much in common and that they are both just are conciousness at work. So what he is saying is that dreams can be as much of a reality as you want them to be, especially when you have the ability to control them. I don’t necessarily believe what one person dreams can be called a reality as it does not affect the people outside of the dream, but in one’s own consciousness what they consider to be real can technically be real. I think being able to lucid dream whenever you want would be a very neat skill and something that could be done for fun, but the scary thing is that some people can actually lose track of what happened in reality and what happened in their dreams, or even think that there dreams really are reality, which may have negative effects on others.