Tuesday

Delayna J TheBeautiful

• On page eight of Discourse on Method, Descartes says,"[...] it is nearly impossible for our judgements to be as pure or as solid as they would have been if we had had the full use of our reason from the moment of our birth and if we had always been guided by it alone".
  My question is, do you believe that we are born with a strong
  sense of reason, as Descartes implies that we are, or is "reason" a reflection of our culture/ up bringing?

Tuesday

Natasha Tharp

• I partially disagree with Descartes in this aspect. I believe that though people are inherently born with their own unique personality, their personalities are solidified by their parents and the way that they are brought up. A person can have a poor sense of reason, but when taught the difference betwen right and wrong through either parenting or the cultural environment. I think it is a combination of the two that make up a person, but I think that the environment and teachings make up more of the sense of reason than what you are inherently born with personally. Nice question!!

Yesterday

Delayna J TheBeautiful

• there is a movie called "Into the Wild". It is a story about a young man who essentially tries to rid himself of society. He goes out into the wilderness and just fends for himself. It is important to note that he did much research on how to survive but, "Too make a long and interesting story short and boring", he just ends up dying from starvation. ANYWAY, being alone gives him a lot of time to think about life and what he wants out of life and why people do the things that they do. He eventually comes to understand a lot about the world that he would not have figured out if he had gone to college, had a job, stayed in society.
  I have heard of a lot of people who have done similar things and developed insightful theories as to their own lives and the lives of others.
  Do you think that the people who venture away from society like this are, in a sense, trying to discover the reason that they were born with or reflecting on the reason that has been given to them by "society" ?

22 hours ago

Delayna J TheBeautiful

• Please forgive my word vomit. One of my friends from high school and I decided that the best time for thinking is after 11pm before 5 am, so here goes a good chunk of this project.
  "[...] as regards all the opinions to which I had until now given credence, I could not do better than to try to get rid of them once and for all, in order to replace them later on, either with other ones that are better, or even with the same ones once I had reconciled them to the norms of reason." (8)
  This line makes me think about college in a sense. I have heard it said that college is a time to redefine and recreate yourself, but I can not help but wonder how much of that really goes on. Sure, our thought processes as individuals should be growing and maturing, but that is a part of developing as a person that development should never be lost in life. What I am finding more and more that this "redefining" of oneself that is supposed to take place during the early part of college is more reaffirming what I always thought to be true. As much as I feel that parts of my life should be altered or replaced, I am understanding that everything I have done up to this point in my life has just defined me as a person and I can not simply let all of this go.
  It may be a sign of weakness to hold fast to those things which are near and dear to me, but I am holding them close in a different light. The connection I am making is in reference to when Descartes talks about the rebuilding of a house to better fit the style of a neighborhood.
  I feel like every part of my being, physical and mental, is like a house. Despite my desire to demolish the house that is myself and start over again in hopes of building something more "stylish" and purposeful, I find that, given my freedom, I accept certain things in my "previous life" as being true and just and good and a solid foundation of me.
  What do you think in relation to this?
  
  In Descartes search for truth, he eventually finds about the same thing everywhere in the sense of how people realize and accept truth. After his realization, he has this to say, "I found myself, as it were, constrained to try to guide myself on my own" (10).
  In my middle school years, I would spend hours online or in quote books just reading through the quotes and finding those perfect ones that seemed to describe me. One day it occurred to me, why am I looking so much to what other people have to say to explain ideas or concepts that I am thinking about? At that point, I found myself at the other extreme, I would not look at any quotes. Why should I? All of these wise people had come before and said these miracle words, but who was to say that I could not think of these inspiring statements on my own?
  I also realized throughout high school that, in order to deeply understand my own thoughts and desires on life, love, and the pursuit of happiness, I could not be permitted to explore these subjects deeply with other people.
  The very presence of another person can have an effect on MY thought process and MY ability to reason.
  I understand where Descartes is coming from when he states that he would have to be his own guide through this exploration. I am a firm believer that one can not personally know truth unless one has come to their conclusion, whatever that conclusion may be, on their own account. It is my understanding that Descartes feels this same way.
  What do you think about this?

13 hours ago

Natasha Tharp

• I agree with both.

13 hours ago

Natasha Tharp

• Just Kidding! In all honesty though I do partially agree with you, although I feel that since I've only been in college for about 4 weeks now I don't get to fully say what college will be to me and whether or not it will change me or just affirm the person that I have always been. When I talk to my mom about her college experience she always says that she learned so many new things and she really does feel like the experience of college changed her. She believes this to be because she saw so many scenarios that she wanted to avoid, and instead picked up on the way that she wanted to live the rest of her life, hence she went from being the most careless/reckless of her friends to being the most responsible. I think that I can't fully understand this because I think the result that my mom came to was a long term change, and I haven't been in this situation long enough to experience any long term changes. Although I do feel as if up until this point I have to agree with you, so far college has simply been a reaffirmation of the person I want to be, as for Descartes house metaphor, I feel like when I came to college instead of fitting into the neighborhood in which was placed, instead I tried to surround myself with the types of people that I enjoyed the company of in high school. The kind of people that are easy-going and simply live to enjoy life, not to impress others.
  
  With the second point, I disagree with Descartes here. He describes the way in which he "...abandoned the study of letters..." in order to "...search for no knowledge other than what could be found within myself, or else in the great book of the world..." While I don't believe that you must learn strictly through books nor is it healthy to solely rely on facts other people have given you, I think that a big portion of learning must be from other people. I can best describe this in my Into to Persons with Exceptionalities class, obviously since I am not autistic I will never be able to understand autism and the way it works, nor was the Special Education community until finally in the mid 1900's Temple Grandin wrote a novel about having autism herself fully describing the way that her mind comprehends thoughts and how she must think in order to understand what is happening around her. Though extensive research had been done on autism, no one was able to comprehend what it was and what those suffering from this disability were going through until someone directly effected by the disability was able to share. I think this is one of the best examples of how even though there is much to learn on your own, you must never "abandon the study of letters" as Descartes had and find a balance of learning from others, both in their experiences and in their experiments, and discovering things on your own. I do think that there is a difference between Descartes time and our own in this particular example though. We still have much to examine in our own life, but we have unlimited access to what is happening in the world around us through the internet, and I think that is a huge aid to our education in all aspects.

13 hours ago

Natasha Tharp

• Now I have a question for you, Descartes describes how he had once found himself having trouble with taking in all of the 'answers' that had been hypothesized by other philosophers/scientists/etc. because he did not want to "begin to reject totally any of the opinions that had once been able to slip into my head without having first been introduced there by reason, until I had first spent sufficient time [...] seeking the true method for arriving at the knowledge" (18). Do you think that with our advancements made today it is made easier or more difficult for us to block out what has been said to consider if we ourselves believe this to be true? With the internet it is made easy to do reasearch and such to arrive at our own conclusions, but if we use the internet are we truly doing our own investigation, or again just relying on the research that has already been done for us?

5 hours ago

Delayna J TheBeautiful

• I think the advancements have both made it easier and more difficult. Easier in the sense that we have access to all of this information at our finger tips and can look up anything at anytime. We also have the ability to look at different sides of issues through researching main different view of the issue or topic. More difficult in the sense that we do not really look for all the information that we ought look for. After all, we COULD find this information anytime that we want to, we just don't.
  As far as believing it is true, if you were to come up with a solid definition for "truth" you would put thousands of years of philosophy under the bus. Just because something is "true" in one situation does not make it true in another situation or time.
  That may not answer the question... if it doesn't, just read word the question and I'll try it again.
  In response to the second question, this is actually something that I constantly struggle with, this concept of, "if I am not the one experiencing the situation first hand, how much knowledge can I "truly" gain from it?"
  Mostly for me this relates to religion. I often questioned the Bible because, how do I know if this is God's word or God's-word-as-interpreted-by-man? But, in the interest of time, that will be another conversation for another time.
  ANYWAY, when I get very interested in a topic, or when I want to do in depth research (not for a school thing, but for myself), I always find some way to observe my topic of interest in real time and perform my own experiments. Most of these are social experiments so it is not overly difficult to perform them, it just takes some planning.
  Long paragraph short: I trust other person's writings as research when it comes to school projects but when it comes to how I choose to live my life and the research I do in relation to happiness and the meaning of life, I will look at others research but ultimately I look to my surroundings and the situations I find myself in first hand for the most truth.