Presidential Candidates

So, I don't have much to say this week and I figure I can always learn more about our presidential candidates. Who are you voting for and why? (I'm simply trying to get more facts, I don't judge!)

Is being an internalist smart?

On monday we talked about how Descartes was an internalist. He concluded his own beliefs first, before making conclusions about the world around him. To me, this is just setting yourself up for failure. As we have discovered, just because you believe something doesen't mean that you are correct. It makes more sense to be a realist, in my opinion. If you take percievable facts from the world around you, and then make up a set of beliefs, you are more likely to have a more accurate set of beliefs than you would otherwise. What do you think?

Brain in a Vat?

Today when we were discussing the idea of the "brain in a vat", it got me thinking about what is and what isn't. Is it really possible that someone could be creating all of the experiences we have? Personally, I don't think so. If we make decisions based on what makes us happy, then how could someone else be controlling us into doing exactly what we want to. My reasoning for this is that we also have experiences that are not happy, and they are different for everybody. Also, if we are just brains in vats, then all of us would just be fabrications of eachother's imaginations, which is very odd that we would all have the same people in our imaginations.

All Disputes Cannot Be Rationally Resolved

It is not logical to say that all disputes are able to be rationally resolved. If someone has very strong feelings about an issue, sometimes nothing will change their minds about the way that they feel. No amount of persuasion is going to make some people change their standpoint. Yes, these people may be ignorant if they won't change their views after being shown evidence to support a contrary claim, but none the less, we will always have ignorant people among us.

I sometimes find myself thinking about death and what it means. Where do we go when we die? Many people including myself would say heaven, but what is heaven really? Or is it just something we created because were scared of dying and that being the end of everything? I think that the fact that we know we will die minimally or subconsciously affects the way we live our lives. We don't constantly think, I want to do this now before I die. We just do what we want and what makes us happy and that to me, is what makes life valuble.

You can sometimes be wrong about what you believe

To say that one can never be wrong about what they believe, to me, is naiive. It's saying that there is no room to be proven wrong by fact. If someone believed that 2 plus 2 equaled 5, they would be wrong, not matter how much they believed that they were right. You can't just assume something is a certain way without looking into the subject for content. After you have exausted all means of research, and have studied all parts of the subject matter then, and only then, can you make an informed decision of what you believe to be true.