Hello dear reader!
If anyone who reads my blog is planning to go back to school, then I suggest one thing: Do not take a philosophy class! At least not one taught by a Ph.D. holder. The reason for this is that a doctorate has many ideas that they wish to share, yet just do not have the time to do it in. This isn't a bad thing, although it does tend to hamper the understanding of what is going on in the course!
If you are planning to take a philosophy class, you should be advised to familiarize yourself with the works by Plato, Aristotle, DesCartes and Hume. If you have no understanding of any of these works, then you should plan on re-taking the course at least twice. Also you may wish to take a physics class, as a lot of instructors use physics examples to convey their points. If you do not, you will most certainly be re-taking the course.
A few words on the authors mentioned:
Plato - Plato writes in dialogue. Socrates is always the protagonist that seeks to find the truth in all matters. While he would be a most aggravating person to chat with, he does eventually get to the point he is trying to make. If you like reading plays or screenplays, you will not enjoy Plato's dialogues as there is no story arc, although, if you are looking for a story arc in philosophy, then you have missed the point and should pursue it no further.
Aristotle - Aristotle is an interesting case. All of his works were written primarily from student notes taken in his class. At times it is very choppy and switches formats a lot! The reason for this is that people that have translated his work were working to not only translate student notes, but also to fill in the gaps to make some sort of flow. Don't be surprised if the text suddenly changes from a paragraph to bullet point.
DesCrates - DesCartes is the most interesting of all the philosophers. His life story is extremely interesting and his meditations tend to get to a point, then move to the next point. It seems like DesCartes was playing a game of connect the dots and an artistic rendition of what the human mind looks like came out.
Hume - Hume is the worst philosopher to try and understand, as you never understand just where it is he is coming from. He only has three philosophical books to his credit and all of them are difficult to fully grasp. At times he attempts to explain things through a psychologist's perspective, then in the next sentence he disregards all scientific explanations he set forth. This is the one philosopher that requires the most time to understand.
If you have a natural inclination to philosophy, then you should take all the philosophy that you possibly can. For the rest of you that are wanting to understand it, explore it a bit before you whimsically decide it will be an essay class and sign up for it! Philosophy may have no right or wrong answers, but there are failing marks. If you do not have a great GPA and you don't understand philosophy, it is a great way to drop your GPA even lower!
Write or wrong, it's still in poor taste.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Dragon Age: Addictions.
A few months ago an addiction was lost. It was a fun addiction, one the required no drugs and had a low cost of fifteen dollars a month. That addiction was World of Warcraft. However, it seemed lately like something was missing. The social circle once enjoyed and friends that pixilated the computer screen were gone.
For a while, it seemed good. No distractions, nothing to do save for homework. This was a good thing before the past Friday. It just took over! The overwhelming urge to play . . . Something. If not Warcraft, than something else would have to do.
Dragon Age: Origins, it took Warcraft's place as of Friday past. With its multiple story lines, side quests and array of colorful characters, I knew it would be the one.
The game has over one hundred hours of game play, and has reply value. A feature that is invaluable for a game to have. The choices made influence how other characters interact with the created character. There is even downloadable content to make the game play longer, and adds even more options to the already expansive world played in.
The controls are similar to that of Warcraft, thus making the transition from Warcraft smoother than if going from a first person shooter. Dragon Age is played in a third person objective point of view. The camera can be moved to an overhead position as well to give the tactical advantage of seeing all action going on around the character's party. It also has an option to pause and micromanage the battles!
The story is not particularly strong, a nation's army is wiped out and the created character meets other characters and raises a new army to defend the nation from evil. However, this is due to the multiple answers that the created character is able to choose from when asked a question. This system allows for the created character to feel more sentient while playing him/her.
With a great game, comes great addiction. This would explain the playing time of twelve hours on Sunday, as well as the sleeping in until two-thirty on Monday. Although there is no social aspect to the game other than the characters you meet, there are new friends that are generated on the computer screen now.
For a while, it seemed good. No distractions, nothing to do save for homework. This was a good thing before the past Friday. It just took over! The overwhelming urge to play . . . Something. If not Warcraft, than something else would have to do.
Dragon Age: Origins, it took Warcraft's place as of Friday past. With its multiple story lines, side quests and array of colorful characters, I knew it would be the one.
The game has over one hundred hours of game play, and has reply value. A feature that is invaluable for a game to have. The choices made influence how other characters interact with the created character. There is even downloadable content to make the game play longer, and adds even more options to the already expansive world played in.
The controls are similar to that of Warcraft, thus making the transition from Warcraft smoother than if going from a first person shooter. Dragon Age is played in a third person objective point of view. The camera can be moved to an overhead position as well to give the tactical advantage of seeing all action going on around the character's party. It also has an option to pause and micromanage the battles!
The story is not particularly strong, a nation's army is wiped out and the created character meets other characters and raises a new army to defend the nation from evil. However, this is due to the multiple answers that the created character is able to choose from when asked a question. This system allows for the created character to feel more sentient while playing him/her.
With a great game, comes great addiction. This would explain the playing time of twelve hours on Sunday, as well as the sleeping in until two-thirty on Monday. Although there is no social aspect to the game other than the characters you meet, there are new friends that are generated on the computer screen now.
Analogy of Writing
Philosophy is an impossible class. It is also extremely hard to write a paper on. Such has been the case with the topic of personal identity and immortality. The personal identity part was not the troubling bit, it was two views of whether or not the mind and body are one, and what happens after we die. I set out to look for something that could be set into words, but also had some barring on what the paper was to be about.
Looking at a book seemed to be the best way to calculate whether or not there is life after death. It would stand to reason that since the ideas of the author are in the book, so the feelings that they worked with while writing them would be (somewhat) intact. This is not saying that the mind of the author inhabits a book written by them after they die, but rather that a part of the whole can be seen through their work. Whenever one picks up something to read, whether it is a magazine article, a work of fiction, or a deeply detail piece of literature, some insight is gained on who the writer is or was.
William Shakespeare has been credited for writing the line, "All the world's a stage: And all the men and women merely players" (Shakespeare 2.7, 139-166). The real question here is who writes the lines? Well naturally it would be the writer who has written the lines! This then makes for a very interesting analogy, as the writer, then, would be considered to be a God.
If a writer is God (in the case of fiction), then surely the protagonist could be comparable to Jesus. In the case of essays, the author is both God and Jesus (respectively), as the writing is created from the mind engineering the work. This, then, means that one could gauge how the author views or viewed themselves. Do or did they fancy themselves as someone separate from everyone else, as is the case of author's like Virginia Woolf and H.P. Lovecraft, or were they involved with the crowd? The writing of person who understands what human condition really is against the writing of someone that does not is vast, just as someone who understands philosophy against someone who does not is also vast.
Whatever the case may be, the far reaching questions of philosophy are generally accompanied by some sort of analogy. This does not limit analogies to just philosophy though. This is something that is constant throughout every work that has been written down. We (collectively) always try and get ideas across through means of comparison. Anytime a statement turns into a, "It was like . . ." situation, a comparison is made. A comparison in this case is not at all similar to a comparison in an essay. It is a means to express something that is imperceptible by simplifying the concept to something that everyone has experienced.
The theory that philosophy is a useful tool to understanding might be true, but then again, what is truth? Why bother with understanding metaphysical concepts at all when a simple analogy could fulfill the same purpose?
Looking at a book seemed to be the best way to calculate whether or not there is life after death. It would stand to reason that since the ideas of the author are in the book, so the feelings that they worked with while writing them would be (somewhat) intact. This is not saying that the mind of the author inhabits a book written by them after they die, but rather that a part of the whole can be seen through their work. Whenever one picks up something to read, whether it is a magazine article, a work of fiction, or a deeply detail piece of literature, some insight is gained on who the writer is or was.
William Shakespeare has been credited for writing the line, "All the world's a stage: And all the men and women merely players" (Shakespeare 2.7, 139-166). The real question here is who writes the lines? Well naturally it would be the writer who has written the lines! This then makes for a very interesting analogy, as the writer, then, would be considered to be a God.
If a writer is God (in the case of fiction), then surely the protagonist could be comparable to Jesus. In the case of essays, the author is both God and Jesus (respectively), as the writing is created from the mind engineering the work. This, then, means that one could gauge how the author views or viewed themselves. Do or did they fancy themselves as someone separate from everyone else, as is the case of author's like Virginia Woolf and H.P. Lovecraft, or were they involved with the crowd? The writing of person who understands what human condition really is against the writing of someone that does not is vast, just as someone who understands philosophy against someone who does not is also vast.
Whatever the case may be, the far reaching questions of philosophy are generally accompanied by some sort of analogy. This does not limit analogies to just philosophy though. This is something that is constant throughout every work that has been written down. We (collectively) always try and get ideas across through means of comparison. Anytime a statement turns into a, "It was like . . ." situation, a comparison is made. A comparison in this case is not at all similar to a comparison in an essay. It is a means to express something that is imperceptible by simplifying the concept to something that everyone has experienced.
The theory that philosophy is a useful tool to understanding might be true, but then again, what is truth? Why bother with understanding metaphysical concepts at all when a simple analogy could fulfill the same purpose?
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