According to Frankfurt the meaning of being a person is two orders of desires. Frankfurt goes on to explain the order of desires, which is”first-order of desires” and “second-order of desires. The first order of desire is a person option to do or not to do one thing or another. The second form of desire is a desire that gives a mirror evaluation of oneself. Frankfurt goes on to explain what he thinks what makes up a person. In his theory he is explaining that humans can make a decision for themselves. That being said, being able to reevaluate oneself decisions makes them a “person” per say. Frankfurt says: “there are many entities besides persons that have both mental and physical properties.” Deliberation is an attribute that we humans share with other species however, what distinguishes us from them is that we build and possess desires from the “second order.” He goes on and states “It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person’s will”(6). Once we are able to subconsciously make a decision and act upon it because it was an act of will and not an act of instinct, then we are metaphorically human. However, Frankfurt still believes that animals do have the ability to desire things and want certain things over others. “It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person’s will.” Frankfurt believes very much so in a person’s ability to act and react according to their personal preferences. For animals however, “first-order desires”or “desires of the first order” are simple desires to do or not to do something based on instincts. Therefore, this is what it takes to be a person. People have the tendency to also not want something because someone else may have it while at the same time want something because someone else may have it to. We humans have the capacity to want different things depending on our own personal preferences and choices of why we need or “desire” something. Humans have the ability to desire under the second order.

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Prompt: David Hume argues that we already know human behavior is determined. Do you think one of the consequences of the argument against free will is that we are not responsible for our actions?

Hume wrote in the passage,”The Obviousness of the Truth of Determinism” the natural human behavior and will. In the following passage Hume explains,”The degree and direction of every motion is, by the laws of nature, prescribed with such exactness that a living creature may as soon arise from the shock of two bodies as motion in any other degree or direction than what is actually produced by it.” This excerpt explains how Humans attract the energy they extract themselves. Therefore, this is why he believes the establishment of human behavior. Following with the passage, Hume states the free will we have as humans and what we are actually capable of.

In my opinion the consequences of the argument against free will is that we aren’t responsible for our own actions .The argument against free will does not cause a consequence that does not holding human beings accountable for their actions. We as people hold practical freedom being, political, religious, yet we don’t hold metaphysical freedom. We have the ability to think for ourselves, but we don’t hold metaphysical freedom. Laws and prohibits stop us from certain things and that makes a decision for us. Some people may break a law, but they’ll be charged upon that law for whatever reason it may be. At a certain extent, we shouldn’t be blamed for our behaviors, because certain events happen without our control. Hume stated that we shouldn’t be accounted for events particular out of our own control, like slipping, accidentally running into someone, etc. While these events naturally happen, we shouldn’t be blamed for something that is out of our reach to change it. Hume states that we have the responsibility when we do something knowingly or with the intent of an outcome, however sometimes we like to think we are at fault or blame each other for what has happened. Although people may argue that you will most likely know the outcome, you may certainly not because it was out of your reach.  Free will can be argued in many ways, but in my opinion you don’t have much free will. So I would agree with what Hume stated in the article. People attract the energy that extract themselves, and that may never change. Therefore this is why Hume believes in the predetermination of human behavior. Life may already have been predetermined since forever. And you don’t have the free will to change that, it is what it is. You already know what life had in store for you.

 

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Choose a passage from the McIntyre reading that describes a particular aspect of persons as the subject of a narrative. Quote the passage, explain it, and tell a specific, personal, life experience that illustrates its significance with respect to identity (your identity).

In the passage the main focus is how the author believes that in order for social structure to continue people have to give different perceptive. For example, movies follow this in a way because it gives the person a narrative view upon the protagonist. According to Alasdair MacIntyre, the subject of a narrative holds your actions as an individual from birth to death accountable, and with this process you live a narratable life. In other words as human beings we have a tendency to live life as though we are telling and narrating our own stories. MacIntyre writes; “like characters in a fictional narrative we do not know what will happen next, but none the less, our lives have a certain form which projects itself towards our future”(333) Which means that unpredictability  coexist as a part of our life. We do not know what will happen later on in our lives, however, as human beings we still hope and make decisions in the present as if we can already assume what is going to happen in the future. This creates us our “dream life” pr what we wish to strive for. MacIntrye goes on to explain,“man is essentially a storytelling animal…personal identity is just that identity presupposed by the unity of the character which the unity of the narrative requires.” As humans to society, our stories must utilize our narrative among others, and have accountability what has happened in our lives and how we choose to tell and expose them. MacIntyre believes that selfhood is correlative and that “we are not accountable, we are the ones who can always ask other for an account, who can put others to the question. We are a part of their story, as they are a part of ours.”

 

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Blog Prompt :

Reconstruct one of his arguments (not the ship captain example) in standard form. Then evaluate that argument for soundness and validity. What practical significance does Clifford’s thesis have? Do you see any fallacies in Clifford’s reasoning?

If you do something bad, it will always be bad no matter if you get away with it or get punishment. This argument is sound because a deductive argument is said to be valid if and only intakes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion be false.

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I consider album covers to be art. Artist express their music by the way the present their album cover art. Sometimes there’s more of a meaning to it. There is some artist that feel that they don’t have to have certain meaning to their work. But majority of artist like to express not only their music in lyrics but show their work of art in actual artwork. Tolstoy believes that art starts when a man has a purpose to communicate to other people a feeling he once experienced and expresses it by eternal signs, which in a way represent album covers and the music that goes along with it. Art is universal. It expresses thoughts and feelings which can be experienced by every human being. Music can be expressed so differently yet felt on so many different levels. Everyone takes in music differently which makes it universal. The idea of sharing ones lyric and having multiple, or even thousands feel the same is an amazing feeling of expressionism.

The first picture shown in the slide show is an album cover from,”Life’s a trip” by Trippie Redd.  The other two photos follow along with the same style, you can distinguish the form of surrealism that part takes in all of these images. Trippie Redd in this album cover is trying to express how life can get crazy and change throughout time. Life gets weird at times which makes you think that it isn’t real, but a trip instead. This type of art makes you rethink reality and how realize how life changes so quickly. Trippie Redd uses these symbols to show to his audience the way he feels about life and also how tripped out life can feel. It all comes back to feeling, his way of expressing his music comes through the artwork as well.

My example matches Tolstoy definition because music is expressed with emotion and relates to society. Music is in everyday society. New artist are coming up and creating their own artwork day by day. The world will never have people just quit their  music artwork, they will always have new musicians. According to Tolstoy, the most important quality of any work of art is its sincerity. A true work of art expresses original thoughts and feelings. Trippie Redd work of art is genuine and different in its original way. Many artist have their own genuine way of expressing their feelings through music and that what truly makes a work of art. In this album,”Life’s a trip” Trippie Redd expresses his feelings throughout the album evokes towards the audiences feelings. Which transits the feeling that others may experience the same feeling- this is the activity of art.

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An example of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in artwork is the movie, Tales of Halloween. Aristotle definition of tragedy requires elements that is a form of drama exciting the motions of pity and fear. Its action should be single and complete, pressing a reversal of fortune. In the Tales of Halloween  the storyline begins with friends watching a scary movie and a child knocks on the door, to trick-or-treat. The protagonist gets stabbed by the young girl which was considering his,”trick.” This then applies to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy because it makes you fear of what’s going to happen next. As the storyline continues, more and more conflicts appears to arrive within the kids and the adults. One of the adults tries to help and get the vehicle to take the injured friend to the hospital. When she rushing anxiously to the car she gets dragged by a child from underneath the car. This builds up more fear of the situation. The kids gang up on her and beats her into critical condition, she then tries to escape and falls into a the pool drowing herself to her death. Its almost ironic that she finishes herself off, because she ends up drawing herself instead of the kids doing it themselves. As the tale continues, the kids find their way into the home torturing the adults with fire, poison, and machetes. It is a horrible scene for all the adults. The children make it look so easy, like they didn’t even bother to try.  The one one survivor runs into a dark room trying to hide from the kids. The girl dials 911 but realizes she isn’t innocent either. In the storyline suffering plays a big role because they made a child suffers then catharsis came into play which made the children purge. Before making a 911 call, she deleted photos out of her phone that are pictures of a young girl being tortured by the adults. The pictures shown was the adults performing awful surgery and removing the eye from the little innocent girl. This form of tragedy turns into pity for the children because the girl had her eye taken out by the adults. The actions of the children was revenge to get back at them for what they have done to their friend. This give the story an ironic twist, because you would’ve never thought the adults were guilty. By having the survivor run into the room and delete the images as she tries to call 911, you can discover that they’re actions caused the kids to do what they had to do. In a way, you can say they deserved it because of the actions they did to the little one. It was fate calling. It was only karma to them, they earned it.

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The film, Existenz by David Cronenberg is about a young woman who designs a virtual reality game about reality and realism. This film fits into Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality by the essence of which is the most true reality and imitation. The video game tranCendz helps build this form of idea (reality) that the players image, but it’s really an illusion caused by the deception of reality. The builder who attempts to reflect a clear image being an “idea” or “illusion’ of some sort. The idea of the game is to have an imitation world and the artist, whom attempts to mirror the builder by deception of art, whether it be processes and products of human creativity and social life, such as languages, literature, and history. For this instance, a video game is played out in the movie. In the movie,”eXistenZ” questions the physical realities in contrast to metaphysical. The movie represents this in many forms, yet fails to represent in any “true form” or idea (reality). This being said, the plot constantly changes from the fish farm and within the game store, within eXistenZ the game itself, and transCendz the imitation world video game. Giving the setting a change of mood and idea. The director ties the movie together in an artistic form, where he imitates the idea of reality, within the video game itself. By doing so, he projects his ideas in action, by movie format. Giving the players a physical word yet imitation game world. In periods of the different stages, the characters felt they were in reality, yet fell into builder form, being mirrored the idea. Thus this created an illusion for the players and weren’t so sure of themselves. Although, they themselves didn’t know they were builders, the whole idea came from their unconscious brain that took apart from the game. The imitation game and the idea of reality caused that, giving the players their character without their own knowledge. While in tranCendz, the director aims to mislead the audience in diverse methods, by producing contrasting distortion and illusionary. In a way these two take a role in illusion causing the distortion of the mind causing the people to feel confused about the whole situtaion. Plato was convinced that artist are deceptive because they benefit from our illusive thoughts. Deception is used to enhance one’s artwork, it’s important the artist does not tell, but should provide a visual experience as these were played out. This shows that,”tranCendz” and “eXistenz” plays into more of the visual experience than the telling. If ones deception is the opposite, Plato may argue the opposite. Therefore, you will need visual experience to show the form of deception.

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There is a parallel status between the prisoners in Plato’s cave and the spectators in a cinema. The cinema and Platos cave are interested with what is presented in front of them. At a cinema the audience engages into the movie, sees what is shown; puts themselves in that situation and takes that in. Which gives them a more “realistic feel” giving them what they want.  The audience wants to believe that the story shown is true, which makes them more attached to the story itself. In the story,”The allegory of the cave” the prisoners saw shadows and they chose to believe what was in front of them.

The people in todays society are deceived by the media and movies shown worldwide. Nowadays it’s so easy to make people think certain things are true, people and society as a whole have became more gullible and feed in to what the media is serving. The power of media deception is mostly used in politics and news information given to the public. But easily falls into social media as well, because technology has became our way of conduct. Often times, the media will try to push towards a certain topic and will give out information that helps their goal or achievement. And the people feed right into it.  Propaganda is another form of deception used by movies and media. This gives them a way to market false statements to their people so they can reach their goal.

In some ways you can mistake fiction from reality, media does this on purpose to get the people on a certain topic. Or even to distract you from what is really going on. But in the end, everyone has their own perception of reality. Some people won’t believe certain situation, or won’t accept the reality. This is creating a sugarcoat or blinding theirselves from reality. If a person is too stubborn to believe something then he or she himself is deceiving their own self. Either being afraid of the truth or afraid of accepting the truth for what it is. People who are easily gullible often believe what is told to them or seen on any media sites. As time passes you will learn to not believe what you hear on the radio, tv, or any media platform. And as you grow, you grow as a person and expand your mind thus your perception changes with you. As they say, the older, the wiser. The physical world is reality,but reality isn’t the physical world. There’s more to the reality world than just physical. It just depends if you are willing to open your mind and view different perspective as a person. In a way, the only change will be your choice of view points.

 

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1. Begging the Question: I have experienced what can only be described as paranormal activity, therefore paranormal activity is real.
2. Ad Hominem: Frank suggest that we mail out the letters in the morning, but what does he know, he didn’t even graduate high school.
3. Equivocation: Pizza is better than nothing. Nothing is better than burritos. Therefore, pizza is better than burritos.
4. Slippery slope: If I loan you a dollar today, you will then ask for ten, and then one hundred. I don’t want that to happen, so I can’t loan you that dollar.
5. Straw man: Jasmine told Ryan,”Babe take out the trash.” Cody responded,”Why do I have to do everything? I spend my time doing homework and going to school, I wouldn’t have enough time to watch Netflix.”
6. Tu Quoque: My mother told me I should stop eating so much carbs because its bad, but she eats bread all the time so that can’t be true.
7. Non-sequitur: People generally like to swim at the beach. The beach has water. Therefore, having floods in homes would be great!
8. False Dichotomy: You are either with God or against him.
9. Argument from ignorance: Although we have proven that clouds aren’t made by cotton candy, we have not proven that clouds cannot be filled with them; therefore, the clouds are made out of cotton candy.
10. Red Herring: My teacher caught me cheating on a test. I responded,” I know I’ve made a mistake. But think of my parents, they are going to be heartbroken.”
11. Perfectionist: I had to redo my notes over four times because of the smudges on the paper
12. Stereotype: I have an Asian student in my math class and he always gets good grades.

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Injustice is an unfair way of being treated by a powerful authority.

People empower and treat others unfairly and they have never payed for what they’ve done.

Therefore,

Powerful people cause injustice and they never pay for what they have done.

An act of injustice I experienced was when my teacher didn’t let me attend a field trip because I was outside and not in class while he was taking attendance. Our yearbook class was going to take a hiking trip to Feather Falls to capture photographs of the views and essence of nature. I had all my luggage packed, food, water, and my necessities. As I’m walking towards the classroom I notice my other teacher that was coming on the trip. I think to myself,”I’m fine, I’m not late, so why run?” I see my classmates come out and so I decide to stay outside since everyone else came outside. As I’m putting my belonging in the truck, he stops me by saying,”You weren’t in class while I was taking attendance, so I’m sorry to say but you can’t go.” At that moment, I felt mad because he still hadn’t taken the attendance sheet to the office. And I spent my time and money preparing my stuff for the trip just to have someone tell me I can’t attend because I wasn’t in the room at the time. At the moment I didn’t have any hiking and or comfortable shoes, so I even went sopping for some the day before the trip. I was so upset, I don’t think it was fair that he was so strict over two minutes or less. I almost felt as if he did it on purpose because he didn’t like me. I felt embarrassed and shocked of what had just happened to me. It almost felt as if I got slapped right in the face in front of everyone. I felt humiliation, I don’t ever think I disliked a teacher so much at a time.

My experience connects to the philosophical argument because my teacher had the power to simply mark me tardy or change the attendance on the roll sheet. Instead he wanted to “teach me a lesson” on not being tardy, but I just found that rude and unnecessary. Especially, if the power was in the palm of his hands. He could’ve easily marked me on time it was literally in his hands, its not like he had to go back to the attendance office to get it. I feel that he didn’t pay for what he did because he’s a powerful authority figure at my old high school. And I’m was just a high school student, nobody really cared about how I felt or cared about the situation. So I had to just leave the scene and bite my tongue on this one.

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