... that such a possibility is ensures anxiety, but not only anxiety, it also offers the joy of suspense. This feeling that he calls "contradictory feeling was christened or re-christened by the name of the sublime"(92). After this quasi-definition of the sublime in the first part of his paper Lyotard goes on to discuss the sublime with reference to a text on rhetoric ... things, not even objects sometimes, appear to "make one feel"(97). To see the magnitude of this dichotomy one need only contrast the sculpture Portrait of Modesty by Antonio Corradini and Newman's sculpture Here I. After thi...

• Word Count: 1414
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... metaphysics, matter and mind, that critics such as Steven Meyer and Joan Richardson have linked back to Emerson's natural history of intellect. Not unlike Thoreau's work, Emerson's writing in natural philosophy moves toward what we will come to think of as an ecology of mind. (12) My thesis is that Emerson's neglected "metonymy" provides a path toward a more complex relation between ... metonymy, the phrase compressing the pickerel's context in the pond's "scale of being," thus signaling linguistically its ecology of relation through biological compression. (14) In Thoreau's Morning Work ...

• Word Count: 9971
• Approx Pages: 40
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Can Descartes be certain that he is thinking? How? Can he be certain that he exists? How? (And who is he?) Descartes" statement "I think therefore I exist" raises questions about the meaning of thought, the meaning of existence but most fundamentally, in what sense he can be certain. The difficulty in establishing the certainty of "I think" and "I exist" is that the two concepts are interrelated. Thus, for example, differing interpretations of what it is to think will have a profound impact on the question of whether Descartes can achieve the certainty of his existence. The success of his atte...

• Word Count: 1657
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

During the last meeting of class we were led through a scattered discussion of the various philosophers and philosophies discussed throughout the year. If we are to find a common problem that offers any sort of unity to what we have been studying, it must be that each philosopher wants to discover how to go about experiencing reality. Philosophers such as Pierce, Tolstoy, Camus, Bergson, Russell, and Sartre have attempted to define an unconditional experience with varying degrees of success. To appreciate an experience unconditionally, it must be shorn of that which is sensed and that which is...

• Word Count: 931
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... described the ego, it might appear that I feel the ego is the most important aspect of the personality or the highest function of humanity. In actuality, however, I feel that no philosophy, religion or psychology can be based on pure egoism. There have been many such "ethical" theories of egoism in philosophy, economics, and political science, arguing that self-interest and "looking out for number one ... " is enough to balance all the contradictory interests and ambitions of human beings living in society. For example, in classical economics it is argued that egoistic self-interest serv...

• Word Count: 3556
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... began to write his three famous books, Discourse on Method, Meditations on First Philosophy and Principles of Philosophy where his passion for philosophy and mathematics could shine. In my term paper, I will be focusing on specific passages from Meditations on First Philosophy, which was written in 1641. Meditations on First Philosophy is a discussion of metaphysics, or what is real. In these writings, he ultimately hopes to ... be originated from a perfect source or God." Another way which Descartes proves the existence of God is through an "Ontological" proof. This states that an esse...

• Word Count: 1700
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... let as many desires as possible be satisfied. Any modern moral theory is adherent to this principle of subjective utilitarianism. According to DesCartes the central concept of Philosophy is the first person point of view. DesCartes evolved philosophy by theorizing that the conscious self is at the center of any philosophical perception. His theories on fundamental thought have been influential to countless great thinkers including ... lives to fit their preferences to form a more virtuous society as a whole. The idea that all of our moral and ethical goods are conducive at making people ...

• Word Count: 2303
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... admission that by simply listening to a day's worth of Socrates" speeches or reading the text once, is a brutal underestimation of the of the critical thinking, that along with the madness is needed to pursue the desired wisdom. Come here, then, noble creatures, and persuade the fair young Phaedrus that unless he pay proper attention to philosophy he will never be able to speak properly ... point, after his 2nd speech is royally pissed at Phaedrus for telling the arrogant Socrates that speechmaking is an art according to Laconian. Socrates sees that the critical thinking that philosophy...

• Word Count: 2193
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to unexplained questions, while never providing answers to the questions about God himself. This is evidenced a great deal in the circular argument made by Descartes in the Meditations on First Philosophy. What follows is a brief account of the third and fifth meditations, which provide Descartes' response to the masked question, "What is God?" Can one perceive or confirm the existence ... scripture that has been deemed to come from your god is also the proof that God exists. This is the type of circular definition that Descartes is trying to avoid at all costs. Basically, it's like usi...

• Word Count: 1331
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the present. Time has no history or future because it simply exists. (Humans are the ones that have an origination and termination, not time.) Regardless of the agreed upon definition of time, the philosophy involved in the comprehension of time truly does weigh heavily on the human psyche. Humans regret the past and fear the future because they are swept up and bound by their ... own impositions of time. Humans are forced to admit that time is irreversible and the passage of humans through time is inexorable because they are constantly reminded of impending ... are numerous possible e...

• Word Count: 1525
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... to empiricism. Mathematics isn't really knowledge about any matter of fact. It is only a game of symbol, nothing about existence. Like logic it is a demonstrative science, mathematical truths are true by definition. Berkeley's radical opposition to the received view of mathematics in the philosophy of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when mathematics was considered a "science of abstractions." Since this view seriously conflicted with Berkeley's critique ... of abstract ideas. Berkeley has unique treatments of geometry and arithmetic and his famous critique of the ca...

• Word Count: 2949
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... no God. If they were to be referenced to, they would be described strictly in the terms of nature. Materialism is not an empirical philosophy. It rests on assumptions that are metascientific not metaphysical in the Aristotelian sense. The assumptions of materialism reached beyond empirical science, though never beyond physical reality. Materialism can be said to conform to ... three theses: "(a) The identification thesis: Mind is identified as nothing more than physical states and processes of the brain and central nervous ... to treat souls as an exception case. Materialism has many d...

• Word Count: 1640
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... wisdom, characteristics, and criteria are an ever-present in Buddhist philosophy and concepts. The goal of Buddhism is to reach nirvana, the final freeing of the soul from all that enslaves it. The achievement of this condition can be fulfilled only through tedious and laborious exercise of the soul and mind, with the ultimate goal being a perfect harmony between the world and mind. Wisdom, according ... soul, the teacher must chose his students based on the soul and no other criteria. Transcending the body, the soul is the most important element of all characteristics of the human natu...

• Word Count: 460
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... go from lower level to higher level nearest to the top. From the Time of the Original Taxonomy to the Time it was Edited There had been a shift to more standards-based education, an infusion of constructivist philosophy into the educational practice, other's forms of the taxonomy, theories of multiple intelligences, advances in neuroscience, newer technologies were emerging as were skills, information on procedural learning ... different ways a person can go about learning a particular topic. Contrasting the Two The original version offered a very well developed definition of six differ...

• Word Count: 1061
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

This one line quote explains more about humans than any definition, research or a detailed book. Human cognition is the subject of utmost interest and has been so for many years. Role of Cognition in Psychology The Approach to cognitive science is a comparatively present day methodology to human conduct that brings light on how we think, with a strong conviction that such ... . Models such as the information processing approach have been extensively used to explain in detail the mental processing, this has helped to explain various mental processes, unlike other branches of psychology this is...

• Word Count: 1347
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the early half of the twentieth century, a movement in philosophy and psychology called Behaviorism grew in opposition to the mostly introspectionist methods of the times. Stressing the relation of mental subjects to their quantitatively measurable physical manifestations, the movement attempted to explain human nature through its (the movement's) experimental methodology. It was John B. Watson who created the term "Behaviorism" ... suppressed all pain behavior, but that still feels pain. This example demonstrates the problems with another portion of Behaviorism of which I was skeptical: ...

• Word Count: 1306
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate