PHI304 Blog -- Jacob Robinson

Do people create philosophies to justify actions, or create actions to justify philosophy? I personally (although starting only some months ago) wrote up a guiding series of principles for myself. These principles represent what I believe I ought to be, and when I find myself in a tough decision I tend to consult the principles to (hopefully) go through the situation in a way that will represent me the best. Now, that all being said, I understand that the wide majority of people do not do this, and that it took me roughly 20 years to do it myself. So with this in mind I lean towards people   justifying their actions on the fly, but I don’t think its impossible to do the opposite. Learned Christian Values I can understand our values originating from Christianity, but I have a hard time believing that they are inherently Christian values. When you have enough cultures competing combined with enough history, structures will change based on the times. The Christianity o...

Reason vs. Logic I like the group’s definition of this difference mostly because it’s a better version of my own definition. Logic in a way is the strict tools of how you set up a problem, what you look at in a problem, and how you pick a problem. If logic is the how, however, then reason would be the why. Why you set up the problem in that way, why you looked at what you looked at, etc. etc. Free Will Thru Revolt I think you could make a comparison here between the Underground Man and Meursault in The Stranger – in the end, they both revolted against the social norms by doing things with which we cannot understand since we were not in their position. I feel as though I can empathize with these characters solely because I can appreciate how high they hold their own values, even if their values are not exactly something I personally can understand. Taking the Easy Way Out Alright, I admit it. I’m a business major. I take GPA Boosters. I don’t take GPA Boosting classes ...

Will to Power I don’t believe its true that the sole goal of all human beings is to gain power. I can think of a number of people who would not have any sort of happiness with a large amount of power, and would rather leave the control to someone else. Intrinsic Goodness I don’t think there is intrinsic goodness, much like I don’t think there is intrinsic evil. All actions can be seen as being a percentage of good and evil, at least to make things simpler. So we could say that an action is 60% good and 40% bad, or vice versa. A Necessary Power I can understand the concept of necessary power – of a necessary relationship between master and slave. But I am not sure what the real-life example of it should be. Certainly, it would make sense that it would be something within economics, as our world has only so many natural resources. The system of capitalism always requires someone to be on the bottom, and so this might be relevant. Slavery as a choice Didn’t know we...