Galileo's Daughter

Now, let's talk about Galileo's daughter and how she was so essential to his writing.


Firstly, Galileo's daughter (i forgot her name, so let's call her GD) helped take care of his health. At a very old age (70 i think), Galileo's bound to die pretty easily. The Bubonic Plague was going around as well! So, she helped to do his finances, made medicine for him, gave him food, and helped him the best she could. Aw, such the filial child.

Secondly, when Galileo was writing his book, The Dialogue, GD was the editor. She helped to put the book together, as well.

Finally, when Galileo was tried by the inquisition for his book, she helped with the punishment that he was given. Galileo was put under house arrest, his book was banned, and he had to recite penance prayers. However, GD took care of all the prayers so Galileo could continue to write, observe, and discover new things. This allowed Galileo to study motion, and make a base for Sir Isaac Newton to later build upon. That's how we got most of our physics today!



or not...

Go Towards the Light my children....

Yayyyyy. Now we get to talk about a huge connection between Philosophy and Art! (Gasp!)

First, we'll look at St. Augustine. St. Augustine believed that humans must remove the faulty impressions of sensory knowledge to attain divine wisdom. By looking inward and then upward for grace, one can achieve salvation and happiness. He used the ideas of Plotinus ("The Body is both the agent and prison of the soul") in Christian doctrine. He believed that there was a divine spark or piece of God's soul within everyone, and that is the universal good that allows us happiness.

This can connect to the Gothic order cathedrals in Art History. Gothic order cathedrals were built in order to let more light come in. It started with Abbot Suger, who was head of the church and monastery of St. Denis in France. He was also a devoted follower of Neo-Platonism, and tried to bring light into the church. He believed that by bringing light (which represented God) inside, God's presence would be brought in (both literally and metaphorically).

With these Gothic order churches, the stained glass windows with biblical stories on them would shine down as the light passed through. As a Christian individual, one would see the vision of what Jesus was talking about by these stories literally hitting you (the stained glass images would go on you by the light). Everyone can access God's good inside them by going to the church, and even the illiterate can learn. Through these images and the light, one can have God's presence, and they can access that little spark.

So basically, light was good. Light helped bring God's presence and access that little good.

^This was bad. It kept you from God.

St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways

St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican priest, theologian, and philosopher who developed rational arguments for the existence of God. His Five Ways are five arguments that he used to try to prove the existence of God.
Personally, I think that the Fourth Way (The Argument from Degrees and Perfection) is the best out of all of the five. In the Fourth Way, Aquinas argues that there are objects that are greater in quality than others. There is one that has a greater degree of beauty than the next and which is greater than the next, and so on. Therefore, there must be a perfect standard by which all qualities are measured, and so they are contained in God.
To me, this makes much more sense than the other ways because this way doesn't give God a special exception (whereas God is an exception to the rules and claims in the others). In this argument, Aquinas states that there are some things that have a greater degree of beauty than the next. As you go along, you finally get the the perfect standard by which every quality is measured. This perfection must be God because the Entity known as God is, by definition of the Christians, a perfect, almighty force from which all good things come from.
The arguments that i have agaisnt this however, are these two points:
1. Firstly, the view of beauty of one person may be different than that of another person ("Beauty lies within the eyes of the beholder"). Therefore, which perception or view of beauty is the correct one? If they are all correct, how do we know which is a higher degree of quality than the other?
2. Secondly, why is this Judeo-Christian God different than the gods of the pagans (like the Greeks). Why is it that this one is so perfect and special, while the Greek gods were human-like and had flaws? The Greek gods displayed not-so-virtuous actions and emotions, why are all perfections contained only in this God?
Despite these two points, I still think that this argument is the best of all the other ones.

Fallacies in Adolf Hitler

Haven't posted a while, so i'll get down to business.

I'll start with Adolf Hitler and how his Mein Kempf is full of fallacies. Shall we begin?

Reading through Chapter 11, one example that particularly stuck to me was:

" Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc. Only unusual circumstances can change this, primarily the compulsion of captivity or any other cause that makes it impossible to mate within the same species."

whoo, quite the mouthful eh? Hitler here is trying to show that races shouldn't mix together since it is pretty much against Nature. Since species of animals don't mate with each other, different races shouldn't! He's also trying to justify the super race that he's so fanatical about. However, here is where it goes all wrong...

Firstly, he is making the fallacy of false analogy. He's trying to compare species of animals to races of human beings. lolwut? hmm, now where does that fail? (/sarcasm)

Are races = species?

I think NOT!

Are there subspecies of humans? Is an asian man a different species than a caucasian woman? at the end of the day, we're all homosapiens. Yet here, Hitler makes a descriptive analogy, but offers no proof of a connection between the two. hmmm, very interesting.

Hitler's writing is just full of fallacies that appear here and there. He calls it justification and truth. I call it FAIL.

Deductive Reasoning skillz that killz

I'm gonna talk about what we learned in class today: deductive logic and different types of it. I'm going to summarize them and talk about 'em. Are y'all excited?

It looks like you are! So let's get started!

In deductive logic, you start off with something known (a given), and you work your way to reach a conclusion!

3 Different types are: Syllogisms, Modus Ponens, and Modus Tollens.

We'll start off with syllogisms.

Syllogisms are made of three parts: the Major Premise, the Minor Premise, and the Conclusion. It is similar to the transitive property in algebra (A = B, B= C, therefore A = C). You're trying to take a specific characteristic of a general group, and apply it to a specific person or thing. There are two terms for each statement (like an A and a B in one sentence), three terms total (A, B, C), and they need to connect with each other.

For example:

Major Premise: All Justins are awesome.
Minor Premise: I am a Justin.
Conclusion: Therefore, I am awesome.

Although the statement may not be true (but it is, seriously), as well as other syllogism (the others may not be true), it is valid! Think of "Justin" as B, "I" as C, and "awesome" as A. In the Major premise, B (Justin) = A (awesome). In the minor premise, the B is present again, and C (I) = B (Justin). Finally, in the conclusion, C = A (since B = A and C = B).

Now, we'll move onto Modus Ponens.

Modus Ponens are kind of like cause and effect. It's easier to show an example than to explain, so here we go.

The basic structure of the Modus Ponen is....

If "p", then "q"

"p" (premise)

Therfore "q"

Ugly, isn't it? Here, this specific exmaple will make things clearer:

If Chuck Norris does a roundhouse kick, then something's gonna explode.

Chuck Norris does a roundhouse kick.

Therefore, something will explode.

See? It's much simpler to understand than syllogisms (an opinion shared by many others). The first statement is a claim of what is going to happen and has two components. If the first component occurs, then the second component will occur as well.

Finally, Modus Tollens

Modus Tollens is kind of the negative version of Modus Ponens. here's the formula:

If "p", then "q"

not "q"

Therefore, not "p"

Yay! Another ugly looking thingy!

I'll give an example to provide more help:

If I do a Falcon Punch, then someone will get hurt.

No one got hurt.

Therefore, I didn't do a Falcon Punch.

Very similar to the Modus Ponen, but the claim in the beginning doesn't happen. The premise doesn't occur, so therefore, the effect doesn't take place.

Yay, I hope you all enjoyed it!

First Entry

Yay, creation of new blog and first entry today! We're now highly technologibudible in philosophy!

Oh, and Sudoku is really evil. I'm starting to unlike it very much.