lost in time

When I started to read this chapter I thought it was going to be about nonsense stuff but then while I read, I became a little more interested. I even got my own theory! The part were I got the most interest is about the moment now. Because there is not a now in time there’s only a past and a future because the now is just a fraction of time, so small that we can’t really live it.
Well I told you that I was going to give you my theory of time. First I started with the question. What is time? Because nobody could tell me an exact definition, I came to the conclusion that time does not exist. We humans came to the idea of inventing time but time does not exist. We think time exist because everything has a life cycle and we invented time to measure this cycles. As Aristotle said: “time is related to motion” well, I think time is motion, not related to motion. Also Savaatar says that time is different for everyone, I think this because time changes when you talk about different cycles of life, for example the age of dogs and humans. It is not the same to talk about 1 year for them or us. You my dear readers might think I’m already crazy but is just a point of view, another theory.
I want to finish by telling that whatever time is, it is happening so you shouldn’t waste any time in the past but in the future. You should live as it was your last day in your life.

Lost in Time

When I began reading “Lost in time”, I knew what we were about to talk, but I never thought time can get so interesting. We began with the “now” example, and my first reaction was wondering about the very moment I was living, but then I freaked out when I thought that what “I am living” all ready past! So… when is the present time exactly if we cannot catch it??
Then we got Aristotle’s point of view about time linked with movement, and I think most of us agree with him because we can even see it in the movies when time stops everything else is still or at least in slow motion. Also, I relate movement with time because every single action that we do, we measure it with time like.. “in the morning I went to school” I’m all ready implying time and action. And let’s just take a look to ourselves; we’re not the same as we were 10 years ago, we have changed physically! Meaning we had some kind of movement in time.
But then I read the phrase of Pierre de Ronsard “Time goes, time goes, my Lady, Alas, not time, we are the ones who go” that means that we believe that time passes but actually time is always present! What it appears to go it’s “our” time meaning our lives. This made me repeat myself that I am temporal and that I will have an end so, I need to wake up to do what I want and live for the moment, also to learn that the past can’t be changed and I need to move on and that it’s up to “now” how I want my future to be. I think we should leave all the fears from the past and the future and just enjoy the very moment.



ps. I leave you with this video that is not really related with time but I think that it has something to do with the book and the class.

TIME

The lost in time is a very interesting chapter, where Savater put me to think about time, time is something that we cannot control and we all are aware of that, in many situations we depend on time. Why is so difficult to think in time?, Savater make this question in the chapter and is so complicated because you cannot talk about the instant of time that you are passing, the “now” like for example, I am know talking about time, but the now is already passed when you even try to think about it, so time cannot be stopped, we can´t catch time, it just keep going.
Aristotle, the great philosopher made a great comment in this chapter, saying that time is linked to movement, “time passes because things happen or something happen to things”, this is totally correct because if you start analyzing this quote you notice that over the period of time things happen, something changes, we become older for example, but if anything happen to us or to things is like time have never passes, things change as time passes. One thing that we have to notice is that time never ends, what ends is our time, in other world our life that is changing over the time.

Lost in Time

In this chapter we read about time, Savater tried to explain what time is using the philosophies of different important people; however what caught my attention the most is what Pascal said about time. He talked not about what it is but how this time answers the question 'when?' and therefore divides time in past, present and future.

Anyways, as I was saying, I liked when Pascal said 'the past should not preoccupy us, since all we can do about it is regret our errors. But the future should concern us even less, since it has nothing to do with us and perhaps we might never reach it, the present is the only time that is truly ours.' (pg.169) I personally liked this reflection since it nowadays many people don't focus on the present and just regret past actions and worry how this will affect their future. Pascal explains really clearly and somewhat beautiful how one should solely worry about the present, and not even worry, but enjoy present.

I decided to talk about this in the final post rather than what time meant, since I believe the meaning of time has no special relation to us, is what comes with time, the actions, that make us enjoy, hate, hope, time in all of its 3 stages, past, present, and future. Finally I believe one should remember that even though we may not explain what time is by definition we can know that we should enjoy time as it passes and don't look back with regret or look ahead with anxiety, for at the present, what will happen is what we choose."Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today, today is a present".

Lost in Time

In this book Savetr talks about time, and one of the philosophers he makes reference to is Aristotle and how he supported the theory of future contingents, against the doctrine of destiny, where everything is already decided without the possibility of change.

When we talk about the future everything is uncertain, we can’t know what is going to happen, the contingent theory, though it supports this idea, narrows the possibilities of what could happen in the future. Savater explains this with the example of the naval battle, on the eve of the big fight we can assert two possibilities, there will be or there will not be a naval battle, we can’t have certainties about any of them, but we still know the possibilities.

I think this theory of an open future makes a lot of sense, because future is the one thing we can never be sure of, and when the contingents may narrow the possibilities of what is going to happen they never tell us what is actually happening, when we talk about future there is not most likely to. And even though those possibilities are not depending on us humans, like natural disasters, we always have an influence in what is going to happen, we can protect themselves against it, we don’t just stay aside and wait.

The Shiver of Beauty

During this chapter I had a different perspective of beauty. I remember once in my literature class, we were in a trial to save Aphrodite because they were blaming her as the causing of the Trojan war. If I just could have known this I(as the defense) could have save her. I wanted to talk about this because everyone sees beauty different. Beauty is different for all people; something can be beautiful because it means something to that person, also because it produces pleasure, maybe because it has a story, etc.
I think that you can change the beauty of things by looking them different, or because we understand it. For example: you can see a picture of a sad context and you might not appreciate as if you were 5 minutes before committing suicide! So beauty is different for everyone.
To finish I think that beauty is something that changes with time and is different for all people. And you can appreciate that something is beautiful when you really see “behind the picture”

miss, I didnt had 5 free minutes this weekends because of ONU, im shure you will understand thanks.

The Shiver of Beauty

This chapter was really interesting because I think it’s a great lesson for us to show us what the real meaning of beauty is. For example: my friends had always thought that I have a terrible taste for guys because they’re not the most beautiful creatures in the world, but I think that it all depends with the personal meaning of beauty, and according to Savater if something makes you feel good or gives you some kind of pleasure then is might be something beautiful! Beauty is something of personal opinion and we must respect each other’s beauty perspective.I think that according to my point of view, something that is beautiful is something that it’s completely honest and transparent in other words what it’s completely natural.

In this chapter Savater mentioned Plato’s idea of artists and how they could actually rule the world only by their art because they can convince people to follow their life styles, tastes, rules, etc. And I think it is related to form our perspective of beauty following a pattern that someone has all ready established and that fits into our life. But I think that besides convincing ourselves with someone else’s beauty perspective, we should add our own point of view and create our meaning of beauty so what we think we like, it’s actually something that we choose.

Finally I’ll like to say that according to Giorgione, beauty is something that passes, and I think we should be really aware of this when we are convinced that something is or isn’t beautiful because we can change our minds with time. Also the French novelist Stendhal mentioned that “Beauty is the promise of happiness”, So it doesn’t matter what you like or you think is beautiful as long as you really know it makes you happy.

beauty

I like this chapter, “The shiver of beauty”, because it talk about something that i thou that is very interesting, what it beautiful? Well I think that beauty depends on the view of each person and how the way you appreciate things, beauty I something that brings you pleasure.
Plato, this great philosopher didn’t like the artist because they have the power to seduce with their art and they don’t question things and facts as the philosophers do “the real teachers”, they just take thing as the see beautiful without questioning, in my very own point of view I don’t like the way Plato took this because I think that seeing something beautiful depends on how you feel about it, if it transmits pleasure or pain to you, beauty depends on every person and I don’t think that you have to question where it came from, who was it made, it is beautiful just because it seem beautiful to you, I don’t think that we need a “real teacher” to teach us how to view things beautiful.
That’s my point of view but everyone can think differently, but I agree with Schiller, about the aesthetic education letting people decide what they see as beautiful gives them freedom, the freedom they need for becoming the person they wish, that’s the point I think that beauty should be freely appreciated for each person, because no one thinks the same and perceive the same.

The shiver of beauty

In this chapter we learned about what beauty signifies and how beauty most of the times gives us pleasure. Also in this chapter we learned about the opinion of many philosophers, the one which I agree the most with is Kant; he gives us many interesting points about beauty.

One of which I like the most is when he says that "the pleasure produced by beauty is the only truly disinterested and unconstrained pleasure we can experience". I like this statement by Kant a lot because I very much agree on what he says, I do believe that the attributes beauty gives us are not only disinterested but pure, this meaning that the pleasure we obtain from beauty is unique and spontaneous. Unlike the other pleasures, we do not obtain the pleasure from a necessity we have because as Kant says the thirst for beauty does not appear to correspond to any concrete need, either of our senses or of our reason. Finally, I think Savater gives us these quotes from Kant in order for us to value the importance of beauty, not meaning physical beauty, but the beauty one observes in nature and in all those things we can't exactly describe why we found them beautiful.

To wrap this comment, I think that beauty is one of the greatest things we can obtain from nature since I believe that in a way beauty "humanizes us", by obtaining a disinterested pleasure by a sunset for example, we seem hypnotized by such wonder that as the chapter is called, lets us experience the shiver of beauty.

The Shiver of Beauty

In this chapter Savater talks about beauty and pleasure, and discusses some of Plato’s ideas about this subject, the one that caught my attention the most was the one about Plato’s distrust towards artists, towards their influence on the masses, to their capacity to produce pleasure .
He finds this so unacceptable because for him the one who controls the pleasure mechanisms in the society controls in a certain level the education of his citizens; and artists great fault is teaching the wrong lessons, is making up fantasies who then everyone takes as truth, is fighting morals and truth. Plato can’t conceive this influence could be use in a good way, because it is impossible to deny its existence, he never sees it as something that could unify people, that could make a united front against ignorance and gain sympathy to philosophy, which as he says, is not as amusing as art
I also want to point out that even though art does influence us, the effect they produce in us changes according to each person, art is subjective as well as our own interpretation of it. And whereas to follow or not the “teachings” an artist is giving us is our decision, we have free will for a reason. Artists are not demons.

Freedom in Action

We humans have the awesome power of freedom but sometimes we get a little bit confused by the word and its several meanings and we feel that we're capable of doing anything under any circumstance, and yeah we are! But first we need to take responsibility of our freedom and learn how to use it, that’s why Savater says that freedom can be an award or a burden, so then our whole life won’t turn into a complete chaos.
I think, we need to learn the concept of “voluntary” and apply it, so we can be sure that is US the once who choose what we want, and not our friends, family, etc. And learn that out freedom is ours and therefore we can’t let anyone else mess with it. Specially us that we’re growing, we’ve learned what our parents or teachers had told us, but I think that is time to learn and decide for ourselves, and think deeper of what freedom can be and can do for us if we know how to use it.
Also, respect and freedom are linked for us as a society; since everyone in this world is different, not all of us have the same ideas and it’s very easy to agree or disagree and sometimes even turn a little bit aggressive and the consequences can turn into a big monster, so in order to prevent all this consequences that even innocent people could suffer, we should live respecting each other, make use of our freedom by making our point but not by making a whole scene.

Finally, Freedom is a very important characteristic that we humans have and the only way to enjoy it is to make sure we really know how to use it as a good to ourselves.

freedom in action

When I was going to begin reading the 6th chapter I saw the title and it was “freedom in action” and I thought that it was simply that we are free to do or not to do an action, but after reading the chapter I noticed that it was much more complicated.
We saw that what you do can only by an action when you want to do it, when you do it “voluntary”, Voluntary is a word that we are use to hear and we just take its meaning as “do it because you want”; ok, it is right but voluntary has a more complex meaning for example the history that Savater tell us in the book about the Capitan of a ship that wanted to get safe to home, but to be able to do that he had to drew the cargo overboard, but he didn’t want to throw it because it was very expensive, but he finally throw it to save his and the crews life, so doesn’t it contradict what I just say about wanting to do something is an action? I think that actions cannot be just determinate because you want to do it, because even if you don’t want to do something and you have to do it and you do it, it is an action too.

Freedom in Action

For this week's post, I would like to talk about how responsibility comes next to freedom, as Savater expresses, "but responsibility is the necessary counterweight of freedom...". I agree with Savater in this quote since responsibility is the thing that makes us think before we act freely (well in some cases). I truly believe responsibility is basic and must come next to freedom so we can learn to manage our freedom correctly. However as Savater also says, "then we must carry the burden of having freedom..." I like this quote since it is true that freedom is a burden, I mean freedom is a great thing but it is also seen as a burden in the matter than YOU and only YOU are responsible of your actions, since you are FREE to choose them, goodbye to blaming your mother, teacher, etc, there comes a time in which every human being must accept the freedom they are granted.

I decided to talk about responsibility because it's something that unfortunately many people don't accept in some occasions, including me. Everyone knows they're free, and constantly they keep reminding the world of it by doing not such great things, but who ever brags about responsibility? Of course we all like to accept freedom but no one really accepts responsibility fully or at least brags about is as when they talk about freedom. It's like the book said, when something good happens to one, one takes all the merit, but if something wrong dare to occur to one then all the blame goes to others instead of ourselves. So I believe than every human that accepts freedom must accept responsibility, it is in fact the "ugly truth" about freedom, accepting the burden that we are going to be responsible, but it is also what will make us more mature and grow as human beings. So let's embrace responsibility, for better or worse...

Freedom in action

“To accept that we are free implies accepting responsibility for what we do, and even for what we try to do, or for the unwanted consequences of some of our actions.”
In my opinion this is, if not the most, one of the most important ideas of this chapter, because I think our whole society is based in this principle; we are free to act, but we must take responsibility of whatever comes from those actions, this is how human societies function, or how they should function, because, and I think this is the cause of all our actual problems, not everyone takes responsibility of their actions.
It is so easy to accept credit of good actions, but as soon as something comes out wrong it seems that it is no one’s fault, no one did it, we just blame each other without accepting our mistakes and its consequences. We are used to complain about the world we live in, putting the blame on everyone but us, and doing nothing about it; we might say it is not our fault if the poles are melting down or whatever because we recycle and all that stuff good for the environment, but in a way it is our fault because we are not doing anything else to help the situation even though we can, we are free to act and do something else. We are responsible of what we do, but also of that we decide not to do.

During this chapter I thought that my childhood questions might be solved. Who didn’t as himself when was little of how big was the universe? Or when does it started? All this kind of questions made me put extra attention to this chapter. When I read I realized that Saavatar states more questions than dots, so I asked myself, if we can see it why we can’t understand it? During this chapter saavatar focuses on three mayor questions, that we will see it one by one next.
The first question Saavatar addresses is how big is the universe? There are two options. One that is a finite universe or infinite. The main problem with the first is that if it’s a finite world it should come to a stop. Imagine for example a wall but then we will ask, what is on the other side of the wall? And so one, because as long as there’s something there is also a space. The other option is that is infinite. The main problem of this is very simple. Can we imagine an infinite universe? What I thing that might be a possibility is that we are like a sphere or a circle, so it never ends.
The second question saavatar addresses is. Is there an order in the universe? This question is kind of tricky because we perceive the universe around us in an order, but like saavatar says “my mess was order to me” so the next question we have is: what is order? Then we ask ourselves again: does the universe have an order? The most important thing we need to ask ourselves is in reference to what? If the person changes, the reference changes and the order changes too. So in reference to me for example the universe is order but perhaps to an astronomer it is a total chaos.
The third and last question is how did the universe started? This is a kind of question that is very probable we will never know, but there are two ways to analyze this one is religious and the other is scientific. According to science, the universe was created by the big ban theory. The big problem is where does the thing called the big ban come from? Where did it start? The other form of analyzing this question is by religion. The people with a religion say that god created the universe. The problem with this is that we don’t know where god came from, and how did he created it?
My conclusion to this problem is that knowing the answer to these questions practically would get us to know the universe itself. No one has ever arrived to satisfactory theory about the universe, about its origin, size, or order and this is why it frustrates us sometimes. Can there be an answer to these questions? Are we someday able to answer them?

The world and its outskirts

The world and its outskirts, this fifth chapter was kind of complicated because it questioned a lot of things that don’t really have an answer like the creator of the universe, we use the religious believe that God made it but we can’t be sure of that so we use it to explain what we don’t understand.
In this chapter there are three points that I found really interesting they are these ,What is the world? We don’t really know I mean “it is a framework were all the things relate” but for me and my world is my family, my friends, my school and all the things that surround me.
But when we come to the question about the universe I see this kind of complicated because even though specialist and scientist explain the origin of the universe we are not sure of that, that’s a hard question to ask, that’s we say “God the creator” as I said before to explan what we are not sure of, some poeple just stop quetsioning and find God as the first cause of teh creation of teh world.
The last thing was the point that Savater said about the order, before I thought that everything had an order that everyone have to follow, but know I realize that I was wrong because the order can be viewed differently from every person you see the order the way you arrange things as you like and as you see as ordered, everyone has its own order.

The world and it's outskits

Thinking about the outskirts… made me ask myself too many questions about the universe and some of the things that surround me, so while I was sitting and wondering what to write about the “outskirts” meaning something remote… I came up with this question... “How can I question something I don’t understand or not even know?” Ignorance can be a gift or a curse because I can’t even imagine something unbelievable, because everything I see or think is something real or at least possible because I know it! Everything else that may be or may exist is something I ignore that’s why it’s called an outskirt.

When we saw the picture of the levels of the world, the teacher told us that we should think of beyond our world, society, etc. Because when we get to think that big, we’ll be like amazing for just considering it, but… well I think that we should take a series of steps because now there’s people that do not even think of themselves, neither their society and so on, and.. How can we get to consider the outskirts if we don’t have a solid base? In my opinion, when I am conscious of myself, who I am and what I’m actually living, then I can go further, until actually wondering about the outskirts can be easier and even more logical.
This book tries to “slap me in the face” when Savater says that I’ve been living in my small world and that we should think beyond, of course I know I’m a little bit wrong for being so egocentric most of the time and I liked that he mentioned this because he made me thought of what a mess of world I’ve been living…I see the news, I’ve read history and many other discoveries and he made me realize that what do we actually know of ourselves?? Why do we try to explain so much and at the end get to know really nothing? Why do we attack our intellect this way?

Wondering about the outskirts made me feel very dumb for realizing that I can’t come up with something “that great” for actually consider it an outskirt… Now I know how Socrates felt when he said “I only know I know nothing”.

The world and its outskirts

In this chapter Savater addresses the world and its surroundings, until what extent does the world goes on? To explain this he talks about what we call universe and describes it as both heavy and light, he also states with the help of Fernando Pessoa that the universe is in fact infinite. I would like to address this matter on my post.

For me, the world without a doubt is infinite, and I believe Pessoa is right when he starts talking about how there is no universe as a whole but rather just objects. This may be a little bit hard to understand but what he is trying to tell us is that there is no "end" to the universe, it just goes on and on, you can't just stretch your arm and find nothing in the outside, as Savater says; the universe continues forevermore. As Pessoa states, we are just objects in this world and everything and everyone is an object serving one purpose, and those objects are held in another object and so on, "there are turtles all the way down..." Of course I don't believe that the universe is held by a turtle and that turtle is standing on another and so on, and I also don't believe Savater believes it, its just and aid he uses to illustrate the point of a universe going forevermore.

We can't say that the universe is finite because we everything that has a beginning has and end, and by ending something another thing MUST start, the universe is like that and Savater introduces this idea since the very beginning when he explains how "our world" is part of a national environment and how the national is part of the international etc.. If we look deeply into this concept it is easy to understand how the universe is infinite and how it has no end, in my opinion we shouldn't disagree with this idea because it is what makes us so special, we may be objects inside and infinite universe but we have a roll that wouldn't be fulfilled to its maximum if we didn't have that desire to be a "bigger" object.

That the universe is infinite isn't a bad thing since it make us even greater we could say, it may sound ridiculous how and infinite thing would make a human greater but if we thing about it, this "fact" help us challenge ourselves and achieve for the best.

The world and its outskirts

When Savater explains what a world is, he says that: “it is an environment that makes sense, a framework within which all things relate to each other and possesses a relevance that can be explained”. Then he talks about all the different levels components contained in this idea. Here he starts with, what he refers to, ‘my small world’.
I think the name for this it’s quite graphic, ‘my small world’ has significantly less components that the other levels, the Russian dolls are a really good example of this; but when talking about meaning I think it is the most important one for us, because obviously all the other levels have an effect on us, but those effects produced in the different levels affect ‘my small world’, and if they don’t, it really doesn’t ends up affecting me.
I think philosophy is a consequence of all this levels, all this worlds acting together, of all this worlds coexisting and affecting themselves. But I also think that philosophy should especially focus on what is going on in ‘my small world’, because as we studied early philosophy is about taking knowledge and defining what that knowledge means to me, so if ‘my small world’ is formed by my family, my friends, my home, if it is formed by my everyday life, by the things that mean the most to me, the things I care more about; it seems logical to me for philosophy to focus on ‘my small world’.

The Symbolic Animal

Hy again everybody
This week I’m going to talk about a very different animal from the rest, I’m not saying that this animal if very different in quality’s, it is different from the inside, by the way it acts. This animal is the Human, this particular animal it is distinguish among all other by different quality’s it has, its an animal that has a very different ways of behaving. Next we have some differences between animals and humans.
One of the main differences between animals and humans is the way of thinking. Even duo we are animals that evolution from animals, we have many differences from them. The way you or me think is very different from the animals, animals just think for that moment (by instinct) and humans think for the future. This is why humans can develop and animals don’t, because animals don’t care what will happen the next day while human does and take measures.
The second thing I want to talk about is the form of communication. Humans as well as animals are able of communicate; the difference is that the human language is more complete from the one of animals. The main difference between this two is that humans give a symbol to everything, that’s the reason Savaatar says that we are symbolic animals, because we give a symbol to everything.
Well then I think this is all for today, but keep in mind that even duo we consider ourselves superior we are still animals, are we?

The symbolic Animal

This chapter made me knew a little bit more about myself, my ancestors and made me thankful for being a human.Since I was very young I’ve got the opportunity to have a pet and explore their worlds so I notice many differences between me and my dog a long time ago and I knew that I shouldn’t mix up my living with his. We humans are complex we have different feelings, humor, etc. And we are aware of this! I really don’t want to get to argue if animals have feelings or not, but I guess they don’t realize what they’re living they just go on “automatic” I mean is like… “I need to eat, Ok I’ll go and get some food” and so on!! We humans even dream our lives like… “I wish I could have this celphone that dances, sings and even does human faces!” Is not like a celphone is a real need! Though I’ll say “I can’t live without my celphone” I know this is false.

Animals don’t go through life pretending or wishing, animals are living for the day, doing what they need, responding to their instincts… we humans live for tomorrow!

Have you ever realize that every single action we do is for the future?? Never for the moment, we are always judging ourselves, pretending we’re cool with our lives and at the very end of our life we think “I wish I did... this, I wish I’d said… that” and so on.If a female dog is “on heat” a male dog is going to come around her and just… you know what happens next, in the human world if a guy likes a girl, he needs to “process” the girl through several steps until he gets to the same conclusion that he had since the beginning (“I like her”) and more and more steps! This is just the human way to say “this is the guy/girl I think I should reproduce with and maybe share my emotional life”This sounds awful because it is translated to the “animal language” but yeah, somehow we humans are pathetic for doing way too much for a very simple thing… but still I think we are smart… or maybe that’s what we want to think?? :O

I inside, I outside

Hi people me again.
Today I’m going to talk about some interesting things that happen within our body that we are not so sure. One interesting question, are we in some kind of dream? Or are we in the middle of a computer program designed to teach children what is good or bad? Is pretty crazy right? But even duo that is crazy it as well be probable. Think about it. Were do we live? (I mean in the galaxy outside us) we have never seen the end of this thing, right? So who knows, everything might be possible.
One good thing that makes me feel good is that they say we have a soul. This is cool because makes me feel that I’m not just a person, I’m also a spirit with different thoughts and feelings as other people. This soul lives within all of us in our body’s, like savaatar says, “it’s in all the body and in the same time nowhere” this means, that we don’t know were it is but we know is there (maybe as a type of energy) and this very soul makes us be different from animals and other humans.
One last thing is what about our body? You know is part of us, but does it play a role in our way of thinking, feeling, talking even the way you see another person? I think it does. Let me give you an example: a beautiful lady is walking and she knows she is beautiful because everyone tells her. Her attitude will be very different from a girl that is fat and short. I’m not saying that is a bad thing only that the way of thinking certainly will be different all because of how they look, this causes security between us. And the security we have inside us makes us do things.
To finish, what are we? A thought, a soul or a body? I like to thing that we are a soul, and god gave us a body so we can live, and the thoughts help us live in this world that as well not exist, but even if this world does not exist, our soul and thoughts exist. What do you think?

the symbolic animal

The chapter number four, “the symbolic animal” seem really interesting for me because it compared the animals with us, that’s a question that all people have and is kind of confusing some times, what’s the main difference between them and us? , ok the first thing we know is that we are talking beings we learn the language to communicate with the other people, the thing is that we have intelligence so as the animals but we use our intelligence in different manner, we have to learn more to survive, because the animals born knowing almost everything that they need to know, they follow their instincts and do things just to keep their selves alive, an in the other side we don’t use our intelligence just to keep us alive but to keep inventing new things and stuff, that’s a thing that I see like a big problem because we always want more and we are never satisfied with what we want, I’m not saying that we should be conformist about everything but I see that as a problem because we are never happy with what’s around us or what we do, so when are we reaching happiness and being happy with what we have?, but for the other side being able to make things better and invent new stuff is really admirable and the fact that we can do it is a big difference between animals and humans.

The symbolic animal

"The meanings of human language are abstractions, not material objects". This quote from Savater's chapter The symbolic animal, I found it quite interesting because I believe what he says its true. Human's meanings are abstractions and not objects, because for example when we express ourselves through language we feel and are talking about abstract things like feelings, we can't express something merely through objects. Abstractions, as the name says it are undefined things that we can't see our touch however when expressing ourselves are fundamental since we express from the deepest of ourself.

On the other hand, Savater also uses this quote as an argument to support the idea that we differ from animals because our language is based on the finding of a meaning, we say things because we want to mean something while animals just want to get something from it. And here I beg to differ, all though I agree than humans use language in order to find a meaning to the words we say I do believe than animals do the same thing.

Even though animals can't communicate through words, they communicate through different methods, one can be consider by symbols, and doesn't Savater says that human is a symbolic animal? By wagging its tail a dog is saying that he's happy he wants you to know the meaning of its wagging of the tail, it may sound as a simple example but its true. I do believe animals look for the meaning of what one communicates because by seeing their behaviour in certain circumstances we can see how they understand everything, and by understanding they're in fact giving a meaning to what is being communicated. Let us remember that by the symbol of a dog wagging his tail they become symbolic animals too, for what is a symbolic animal? Someone that communicates through symbols!

The symbolic animal

Rather on focusing on what man can do with the world, like Sophocles did, I prefer to think about what man can do with himself, more specifically, what I can do with myself. Because I believe that any change that we attempt to produce in the world has to start by ourselves, what man can do with the world is, in my opinion, a reflection of what he can do with himself.
The possibilities of what man can do with himself are infinite, we can be, we can do whatever we want. I don’t know if what Pico said about everything having his place on the universe and not being able to change it, is totally true, I don’t know if we are the only ones capable of this; but I am certain, as much as one can be after having this class, that we have no limitations, we can be whatever we want, we can change our place in this world, and is entirely up to us to produce any change.
What man can do with himself, that free will that characterize us humans, gives us tremendous power over the world around us, man is the “happiest animal”, at least as long as he wants to be it.

I inside, I outside

At the begging of the chapter I remember that in our class many of my classmates where asking too much, that the class got very noisy when we started with the quote of the floating brains… maybe we’re just scared to notice that we are not as amazing as we thought we are, or maybe is just a bunch of lies pulled out from a marihuana addict… but who really knows? Maybe it is true!! This chapter I think it was very reveling of how much do we really know about ourselves and what is around us, though I think it is very confusing trying to keep up with Savater and other’s ideas meaning quotes, teacher, students, etc. I hope at the end I get my own version of what this book’s content mean to me.

I liked when he said that we are inside of our body, as if the body was something temporary… and yes, it is!! I mean, we can’t go to a “body shop” and ask for the body we like the best and keep it that way the time we want, maybe because the body isn’t that important, is just like a tool to do what we want.Like the example of the bulb, “there’s no light without the bulb” and the bulb without light is useless! Is like “there’s no “spirit or soul” without a body” and a body without no spirit its useless… just try to picture yourself kissing a death body, it can be the hottest guy/girl in the world but still is disgusting and repulsive( in my opinion) .

This chapter was really interesting because it makes us doubt of ourselves and our very own existence as we know it. Maybe Savater wants us to picture life as an illusion because that's the only way to make us notice that our life is nothing, but we can make something out of that "nothing" but this "something" is only for ourselves, because at the end of the road that's all that matters.. What did I do for myself?

i inside, i outside

Chapter three, “I inside, I outside” seem to me kind of confusing because it really put me to think about myself, what happens inside of me, what I think and the things that happen around me, how I perceive them.
How can I know that what I know really exist or is true, everything can just be illusions that I have, Truth is a big word because I think that we could never be totally sure of something been true because everything can be just illusions. That’s the thing that I cannot be sure of anything being true but what I only know is that I exist because I think, because to be able to think and to do things I have to exist, that the only thing that I can be sure of, “ I am, I think”.
I know that I’m myself because I am unique, all the people in the world is different and no one can be the same, I know that I will be always myself even thought physically changes or ways of thinking the only thing that can end myself is death, that’s something that keeps me comfortable because I’m sure that I’m someone that thinks, that lives and perceive the things that happen around me, like the is raining, feeling cold, feeling sad.

I inside, I outside

“What if we are just brains floating around in a bottle full of reserving liquid and some cruel Martian scientist is subjecting us to a virtual experiment?” I like to start with this quote of Savater’s that may be consider a little bit radical but I would like to consider it. This quote Savater uses in the introduction comes from the explanation of how René Descartes is regarded as the founder of modern philosophy and methodical thinking.

In class many disagree with Descartes and even called him crazy, regardless of that, I actually found his hypothesis quite interesting. I don’t mean that yes in fact we are being controlled by some Martian, but the fact that somebody actually stopped and tried to question life as we see it is something that I truly believe deserves some credit. Life is full of unknown forces, experiences, and by accepting them as they come without questioning (as Savater said in the introduction of the book, when he said there are some who will just say Oh what a world we’re living in!) makes them mediocre; the fact that Descartes was the first human to wonder if reality is in fact true is something everyone should admire, even if you disagree with him, his questioning must be acknowledge. For what is reality, one may question and the fact that Descartes gave us two possible theories, I reaffirm, must be giving some credit.

Descartes give us two possibilities, the perpetual dream and the malignant spirit, we may consider them crazy but as Savater reassures he was just asking questions, he never said that was the way things were no questions asked. By developing the process of methodical doubt, Descartes was trying to find a method so he could explain reality among other questions which is more that many of us can say.

So to conclude I just wanted to state the fact that Descartes wasn’t mad nor was he fantasizing, he was simply asking questions no one ever thought about and for that he deserves to be called a philosopher and not a mad man as some stated in class. For no matter if the reality we’re living is a dream or a byproduct of some chemical equation made by Martians, one should never stop questioning life and its happenings because it is how man has discover and explained everything we partially know and that’s the only way of understanding both ourselves and the world.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~ Albert Einstein

I inside, I outside

As Descartes I also take me for granted, it doesn’t seem logical to take myself as just another illusion, because whatever I am with or without a name I exist.
Hume said, and some may agree, I is a requirement of the language a placeholder, but isn’t every word a placeholder? Didn’t humans give words their meaning? Isn’t language a product of humans’ thinking? Words really don’t mean anything, we created them, we gave them some sort of sense; even though I is nothing more than a placeholder, as every word in any language, I still am real, the existence of I is not determine by a word.
If I can’t be determine by a word, a simple placeholder which we by being part of a society accepted, it can be, in my opinion, be determine by ourselves, because who but me could be more qualify to establish what is me. Since we are little we are encourage to know ourselves, to find ourselves, to define ourselves; this is what makes me think that the only person who has control over me is myself, even though people may influence me I have the last word.

truth of reason

when I started to read this chapter i thought that how can things we see every day may not be real? or how things we have been teached scince we were small kids may be not true? after reading I realised that true is a variable. what thoes this means, that there are lots of truths for the same thing example: the sun. if we see the diferents points of view of the sun of the diferents cultures around the world we can see that they refer to the sun as a god, others like source of life, if we talk about poetry they might refer the sun as joy or happines, etc. the problem comes when this cultures crash, they are talking about the same things but with diferents words, this might even lead to war, example: the cold war, if we remember the cold war started because the comunism and the capitalist forms of goverment. all what this goverments wanted was the best for their people but by diferents methods. for this kind of problems that can arise from who is saying the true exist reason. reason is the method which we need to follo in order to aboid confrontation for the diferents point of truth. it is up to reason that the problem may be solved peacefully. because remember, "there are not absolut truths only some truths more real than others".

i thing that savatar says one smart thing, "there are always things to check" this is true, if we know at least something about the world is thar is always in change, so it is of vital importance that we check what we know so we dont stay behind.

The Truths of Reason

Too many questions and few answers! Life is really an endless puzzle ( I guess) Figures that the only way we human beings can live is by questioning!! though this can turn into a “seeking of truth struggle”.
But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? We humans were made for this, for reasoning! Or at least that’s what experts say… or at least that’s what I’ve figured out… for example I can tell my dog to come and eat his disgusting smelly food but he doesn’t even complain! He’s just like… Wagging his tail… If I was in that situation I’ll began to complain saying… WHAT?! THIS STINKY FOOD AGAIN?! WHY DO I HAVE TO EAT THIS?? AM NOT EVEN HUNGRY WHY DO I HAVE TO EAT RIGHT NOW!?

Remembering a video shown in class (the one about the little kid saying that the evolution is a lie) We can all say he’s so dumb and his Sunday church speech is worthless!, I think must of us agree that all he’s saying is stupid but, (according to what this video wants to tell us) he actually believes all the crappy stuff he is saying! And the worst of all is that thousands of people AGREE!!!! If we thought the world was falling apart, I guess that is because of that people but I don’t want to mess up with “the lord” fans.
What I really want to say is that everyone has a version of the “truth” and it all depends on our reasoning, obviously there are some people that need to develop more their reasoning skills but we need to improve them too.

Finally I want to make clear that seeking and finding the truth is very important because a truth can define us! But first of all, we need to reason what we are about to take as ours because we never know when we are going in the wrong direction.

the truths of reason

After reading this chapter of the book I became more interesting of things that happen in my life, I started to question myself of things that I know that exist but I want to know more about them. But these questions that Savater put in the book like for example “how we know the things we know?” “ How did we obtain it?”,l think I get most of the things I know from experience, but how can I know that I’m not wrong with what I see, because most of the times I just believe what I see but I don’t go any deeper in investigation and sometimes there can be illusions, ”How can you improve it?” well that’s a very hard question to ask because how can I know the best source of information or how can I now if I am right with what I see or experience, I think life just consist of constant questioning just like as Savater says.
But besides all we should always try to find the truth no matter what and for that we have to use reason. “ the truth and reason share the same claim to universality” that means that to have a better and more real believe in truth the truth have to be universal that means not just your truth, it has to be the truth for many people too.

The truths of reason

For this post I would like to address, Savater’s point on skeptics. In “The Questions of Life” he explains skeptical philosophers as the ones who question, or deny that reason is able to establish unquestionable truths; that is that “they question all human knowledge and even doubt that human beings have the capacity to acquire any kind of knowledge worthy of the name” (pg 29).

So I agree with Savater when he says skeptics are contradictory. How can they say that there’s no reason or a fact that is in some way certain when by denying it they are affirming something. This is why he says they are contradictory, because one can’t say he knows nothing because by saying such thing he at least knows one thing: he’s an ignorant, this example I believe expresses and explains easily what Savater’s point is.

I decided to base my comment on skeptics because I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about until I reread it carefully, and by doing so I discovered that for me skeptical philosophers are denying the truth in the most erroneous way per se. Of course there are many versions of truth, as well as different fields of truth, but we can in fact acquire some kind of knowledge that is worthy of the name as skeptics denies it. I can say for example that the earth is round, this is a truth, at least a kind of truth, men have been in outer space and proven it and it’s something recognized globally that’s why it is a truth. One may question this and many other things but that’s why Savater introduces the fields of truth (other point that I would like to establish in order to contradict skeptics more profoundly), reason may not be the same for everyone and that’s why these fields of truth explain how truth can take different paths.

So, to conclude I think skeptics should take another view to what they say and rethink about the fields of reason, because I think that way they’ll find out that we can acquire knowledge and that’s why we are different from other species, because humans do have the capacity of acquiring and search for knowledge, we just need to remember that that knowledge is a kind of truth, a truth of reason among many different ones.

The truths of reason

The different ways that we obtain knowledge are in my opinion very untrustworthy by themselves; I mean Savater even explains how we can’t fully trust our own experience to be truth because our perception could be wrong, because our brain could be misinterpreting the information and what we take for the absolute truth is in fact wrong, an illusion.

If we can trust our own opinion how can someone expect us to believe what we read, what someone else tell us, because if our experience is not right why would theirs be; or what we study, because information changes, hundreds of years ago everyone thought the Earth was the center of the universe, then they prove it wrong and everything that was supposed to be the absolute truth changed. The only thing we can be certain about is that there is no absolute truth.

To say there is no absolute truth doesn’t mean that we can’t search for truth, that we can’t get close to find it. We can look for truth, and the most effective way to do it is through reasoning, the most effective way to look for it is taking all the knowledge that we have from the different sources and put it together, we may not fully trust our experience or what we studied but if we combine all that knowledge and reason it we may find the right way, the way that would take us to the truth. There are different ways to obtain knowledge and apart they are not very trustworthy, but together they refute or support themselves, they complement each other.

Death

Talking about death is hard for everyone, it’s never easy to let go someone we love or something we love such as living. When we talk about life, we always picture something happy, colorful and simply alive but, when we talk about death we always get this image of sad and darkness, why? If we don’t even know what being death really is!

Being death means that your organs stop working! But the worst of all is that you never get to know how and when it is going to happen! Is not like going to a party that you can get ready and prepared for any “emergencies” is like… SURPRISE! Your death… there’s nothing you can do! I think that, that’s what scares me the most, the term of “absence of life” makes me think about all the things I did and all the plans I wanted to do… their just gone, there’s nothing left to do.
Am going to be honest by facing that I am really scared of dying, probably because I have too many plans to “enlarge” my life that I haven’t done yet, maybe that’s why we always relate old with “about to die” Because old people all ready did what they wanted to do!

That’s what makes me think of what I am doing right now… I mean… am standing in front of my computer instead of doing what I really want though I’m conscious I can die in this very moment!
I think that no matter what last name we have, what our chances with a guy/girl are, what my crush is going to think about me…. We should all be grateful that we are here to witness life with its lows and highs and most important of all to.. actually live it.

let us begin with death

Death is a very important subject to think about and to realize that all of us at some time in our life will die and realize that it is inevitable and irreplaceable you cannot take the place of other people, they will die anyway.
Fernando Sabatier tell us that thinking and realizing the existence of death can make us take life more seriously because we should live and do our best because we know that any time we can die and you could never come back and do stuff that you would like to do. If death wouldn’t exist life wouldn’t be exiting and interesting because we could have all the time we want to do things.
The thing that realizing that we are going to die differ us from animals is very interesting because many people say that humans are like animals but here we found one of the important differences, because we are humans because we know we are going to die and animals does not know that. Death humanizes us and makes us unique because the thing is that no one can take our place to die for us it is a different experience for every person. Realizing that we are dyeing make us think in life as a more serious thing.

Let us begin with death..

Death, what should we say about it? Shall I say how some are afraid of it? Or do I dare to say the forbidden, that maybe there’s no heaven? So, what’s the deal with death?

Well for this post I thought I’ll just give my opinion about death, not getting too involved in religious themes or in the facts we know but simply what I think about it. Death as many perceive it, is talking about the unknown, that “thing” we don’t know and many of us are afraid of, but for me death is the conclusion of ourselves.

As I see death, I do not categorize it in a bad, good, scary, etc thing; I simply put it as the conclusion of a human being. One doesn’t know when it will come or how it will come but one thing is for certain, death will come to us. I’m not trying to say that once it comes there will be nothing afterwards but just talking about death, the term is talking about the conclusion of something.

Death for me is not something I think about as much and I think that if one thinks of it too much you’ll miss the important part, which is life. Life is what comes before death that’s for certain, that’s a fact, but what comes after death we are not sure, no one knows for a fact what will happen after it, and that’s why I profoundly believe we should focus on life.

Life is a fact, life is a certain thing, life is real, so why waste our time thinking about death? I don’t mean to say that we should never think of it because it’s necessary for us to know about it. What I’m trying to say is that we should focus on death as a “sub term” in our life, we must know the basics of it but we must also remain neutral about it. Death is the end of the pathway of life, and for me it only remarks that we live only for a certain period and that’s why we must accomplish our goals and our desires.

It may sound a little confusing but as a final point, what I’m trying to say is that one shouldn’t worry about death because we don’t know what will come after it so we must focus on what comes before, life. And life is the important part in this theme, why do I choose the opposite of death as the main point? Well because I firmly believe life is the only way we can prepare ourselves for death because one who lives plentifully may rest happily. So I say, let us begin with life…

Let us begin with death

I am going to die, even though I am able to say it I don’t think I am able to understand it because the idea of death seems so far away from me right know that I am not capable to process the fact. I know everyone has to die, I know it can happen anytime; and it is not like I want to live forever, because I don’t, but it is so difficult, and kind of depressing, especially right now, in the earliest times of my life, to imagine a moment in which I am not going to exist.

It might be some kind of denial, but that denial, I think, is the thing that keeps me focus on life, on taking advantage of it instead on living worried about the future, about the time everything is going to end. I don’t want to think about death because I am too busy thinking about life. Epicurus said we can’t experience death so we shouldn’t be afraid of it, I think this is THE thought, we can’t live fearing death, we can’t let it control our lives, we are all going to die but as long as it doesn’t happen we are ALIVE.

why philosophy?

Philosophy can't be just another subject to teach or to learn, it's way much more than just that!
Now, why philosophy? Why do I need to learn anything at all about philosophy if just like this am doing good?

Well, for sure there's no right answer but am getting a clue... this will actually be helpful!

Since class #1 I realized that I've lived for around 17 years with questions with no answers! Like... why em I here? Is there actually a real purpose for living? Why are we human beings different but at the same time so alike?!! JUST TOO MANY QUESTIONS THAT BRING BACK MORE QUESTIONS!

So... Since scientists, the pope, my teachers, mom and dad haven't come with an answer yet; we have a little something that may come with tons of possible answers and more deep questions with wake up calls… I better named it as philosophy!

Now, philosophy studies way too much and beyond! And either I like it or not, I live with it because I’m human! I can't go walking around my whole life pretending that nothing is going on in my mind because it actually is!

Philosophy makes me human, makes me realize that a body is just a simple wrap if we don't question anything at all ( if we live without philosophy) questions only makes us smarter and build us up as humans, and philosophy is based on questioning everything!

To make this short... Philosophy isn’t just a bunch of questions and weird-real statements, philosophy makes us think, makes us real and be actually living humans, it makes us keep our feet in the ground and value all that surrounds us and most important of all to LIVE in a real life.

What philosophy?

After reading the introduction to the book “The questions of life” I realize that philosophy is very interesting topic to study and to think about because is something that help us as humans beings that we are, it is not something that just put you to think a lot more in everything that we do, we are or we see, y think it’s a form to question yourself for things that you don’t know, but if we start questioning stuff we will have more knowledge of what we are and why things happen. We give philosophical perspective when we start questioning stuff and getting information, when we do this we can change the way we view things and have different interpretation of the world, us and everything that is around us. I think philosophy make us take life more seriously because by questioning things we become more interested in the things that are around us and that we don’t even know. Now in this times we are not really into questioning stuff that is around us, well at least I don’t question about many things that I just take as normal and that’s it, but we have to think and question everything to help us understand the world we live in.

illeana soto

Why Philosophy?

Post made on TUESDAY

As we saw in class, many people have this question on their minds, why philosophy? As time has passed, society has evolved into a new “type of thinkers”, we don’t pay attention to the meaning of things anymore. People, including myself, loose the value of meaning and replace it with solid facts, facts who are visible and therefore are solid, facts that aren’t malleable and therefore reliable. So is no surprise one may wonder, why philosophy? Isn’t it the study of nothing?

After reading the introduction in Savater’s book, “The Questions of Life”, I reaffirmed my beliefs. All though I’ve always consider myself a logic person per se I also believe philosophy is an important teaching in our development as human beings. Philosophy is about the teaching of our inner-self, by philosophizing we learn about ourselves, matter that can’t be taught by anyone, therefore one must know the importance of it. If we understand philosophy we can understand or at least try to understand our world, starting from the very basics, ourselves.

We live in modern times, were ideas aren’t questioned as much as before, we believe in facts and what they represent but we don’t take a minute to deeply analyze them and understand what they represent to us as a person. This is why philosophy is so important, because it isn’t about learning 1+3, it is about finding the meaning of things and how this meaning relates to us and affect us. By philosophizing we learn about the things, ideas, facts, etc that mean the most to us and how we evolve according to them. We find meaning in our lives, in our actions and in our ways of thinking, this reinforces us as persons of true and self beliefs, persons with solid bases who are committed to make themselves better.

To conclude, philosophy is important because some may say is the study of nothing, but if you take a close look into it, you will find it’s the study of everything, of everything that MEANS something to us, that represent a major change in ourselves, so if we want to evolve as sons, daughters, moms, grandparents, we need to find the meaning of life and its derivatives, and philosophy gives us that gift. By thinking philosophically we learn the most valued type of learning, the one nobody can teach us but ourselves and will remain for the rest of our lives.

why philosophy?

One of the main arguments against philosophy is that it serves no purpose, and I believe philosophy serves no purpose, but it serves no purpose other than understanding; it serves no purpose other than give us a sense of who we are and how we relate to the world around us. Philosophy serves no purpose other than finding out what the information we are given really means to us as individuals, as part of a society, as part of the world.
Philosophy dares us to think, to go beyond the established solutions and find our own answers; it leaves it up to each person, I make the questions and I give the answers, there is no such thing as someone else’s knowledge. The thing about philosophy is you can't skip steps, too many questions and there are all for you to answer.
People may say now in the twenty first century philosophy is useless or obsolete, but I think that more than that it could be, along with science, a way to fix all the problems we are facing; a way of getting out of all the trouble we have put ourselves and the world we live in into; and also a way to prevent us from making the same mistakes all over again.