Forms.....

In class the other day we talked about the world of forms and used trees as an example, saying that our soul has knowledge of the world of forms and uses that knowledge to recognize a tree as a tree. I think that nature exists and that we name a tree as a tree because we need something to call it. It cannot be proven that there is a world of forms or a soul that has complete knowledge of said world. I think that is why people in the world recognize objects with different words, because they don't know all about forms and things. I think we just label objects with a word because we need a way to communicate to each other what we are talking about. A tree is a tree because we have called it such.
Question: what do you think about the world of forms?

Emotions

This is in response to Kolb's Corner's post question. He asks if we agree with his opinion that decisions will always be effected by emotion. I agree with him. I think that people will always make decisions while taking into consideration their emotions, or the emotions of other people. If your parents tell you not to do something and you want to do it anyway, you would take into consideration how angry they are going to be with you if you do it. I think it is good to have emotion when you are making decisions. In some countries in war, they sacrifice some of their men, for the good of the nation, like the kamikaze fighters from japan. If they had cared about their citizens as individuals more, more innocent people could have possibly been alive. i think its nearly impossible for people to make decisions without using any emotion though. if you make the decision to hit someone, you are feeling angry, if you decide not to hit them, you could be feeling sympathy or something else.
Question: is it possible for people to make decisions without using emotion?

Turtles

Societal Norms....

This is in response to La Tortuga's question on her post. The question is "Do you think social norms keep us from being spontaneous and cause us to care too much about what others think?"
I think that today's society tries to censor kids way more then it should. My sister likes to wear things with skulls on them because she thinks it's cute. However, she cannot wear anything with skulls on it in school because the school counselors link that to depression. In reality, she just felt like wearing skulls with bows that day. Many schools try to censor clothes (T-shirts especially) because they do not want anything inappropriate in school. I personally believe that in life, some things are going to be considered inappropriate and if we censor kids from experiencing it when they are young, then when they do experience it in the future, they won't know how to handle it. By saying we do not want to subject kids to certain fashions or beliefs we are stifling their ability to think open minded about things. In many cases in history, you see people being ostracized from a group, or a war being started because someone was ignorant towards a situation. I think we could loosen up on some of the rules we have, in schools especially.
question: Do you think censorship leads to rebellion and/or ignorance? if not,list some effects (positive or negative) censorship does have on society.

Hamster

The Sophists

First of all, let me clarify that i do not think the sophists were perfect. However, I approve of many of their ideas. On page 30 in Pojman's book ideals of the sophists are listed. One of them states "they embraced skepticism about ultimate reality and concentrated on that which is certain." I think that was a practical choice in interpreting life and what they need to accomplish because you cannot assess a situation without first acknowledging what is certain.Ex.) If you are trying to get out of a room, you have to isolate what you know from what you do not. You would know for certain that there are four walls, a ceiling, a floor,and a door in this room. Anything you figured out afterwords would not necessarily be certain knowledge until you tested it. You would need the certain knowledge to figure out what you do not know. One of my favorite questions that a sophist would ask is "how can i play the game of life and win?" (page 28.) I like that they tried to make the best of things instead of thinking why am I here? or how can I do good? They tried to make the best of their lives and took everything else into consideration after. They made money and got what they wanted and I can respect that.
Who do you like better,The Sophists or Socrates?

To act passively or to not act passively, that is the question.....

This is in response to Bryan's question.Is there any situations in life when you should not act passively towards aggressors? And, If so, when should you not act passively?
In most situations it would be wiser to act passively. Although, there are occasions where acting passively will do nothing for you. Then there are sometimes where you have to make a choice. A good example would be of the movie the Dark Knight. There is a part of the movie where the joker is killing people all over Gotham. By acting passively, Batman enabled the joker to continue killing people. The only productive thing for Batman to do was to come forward and reveal to the joker his true identity. A continuity in passive attitude would have resulted in the deaths of more people. My point here is that, especially when dealing with cereal killers, it is definitely not a good idea to act passively.
Question: Do you think there are people that exist that do things just to test societal norms? If so , why do you think they do this?

Violence

This is in response to Austin's blog question "Do you ever think that maybe people will realize that crime and violence isn't the way to go...or do you think that there will always be crime and violence among societies?"
I think that crime and violence will exist as long as people do. Human emotions will not allow for there to be eternal peace. As for violence, some people will kill over jealousy or hate. It happens frequently and will continue to happen. I think the reason this will continue to happen is because not everyone disapproves of the way the world is. Some people think that violence is necessary, and as long as those people exist, so will violence. I think crime exists for very similar reasons. Some people steal because they are jealous, others steal to see if they can get away with it.
Are there times when stealing or violence are acceptable?

Free Will, Do we have it?

this is in response to austin's blog. i believe that everyone has free will. As long as we are not in some dream state, we have free will. I think the reason that most people believe they don't have free will is because of the consequences society attaches to the decisions we make. It's so unfathomable to some people to break society's rules, that they accept in their minds that they have no choice but to obey the rules that have been given to them. As long as we keep on living the way we are i would see no problem with being controlled by some great being that we do not know about. I mean sure it's disturbing that our decisions aren't our own, but we would never know that if we really were being controlled. whether i have free will or not, i know that i am happy with the life that i have and i would continue to live it this way whether i though that someone else was in control of what i was doing or not. how ever, i believe that is not the case and that people control their own lives and are responsible for their own actions, no matter how miniscule or severe.
question: should all rules society gives us be followed?

Response to smells

This is in response to Daniel Gaines post. I dont know why our minds register certain smells good and certain smells as not appealing. I think it is because that is what we are raised to believe and our minds accept it. Kind of like in class when we talked about nature v.s. nurture. Certain things that smell bad to one person might smell great to another. Even though we do not like the smell of trash, it is quite possible that someone else loves it.
question: Do you think we would react differently to certain smells, if we werent raised to like or dislike them?