A Review of This Is Philosophy by S. Hales
Philosophy as a house of concepts is often considered complicated for people to read and understand, however, Hales’s This Is Philosophy is easy to pick up, his language are simple enough for me to catch his mind. I enjoyed reading this book much because it shifted the way I think about philosophy, what came to my mind was a bunch of difficult, abstract, illusion kinds of senses when I heard of the word ‘Philosophy’, after I read this book, I understand that philosophy actually deals with the very basic humanities that we all have thought about.
The book presents a various of topics and ideas that be discussed in our everyday life, the first chapter investigates ethics, it addresses my attention to …show more content…
Before I read this chapter, I thought God as a universe that beyond touchable, invisible, probably doesn’t exist. But God in this chapter, is well explained, it is a faith, a confidence feeling of our own. In the field of philosophy, there’s an argument in whether God exists or does not. Hales introduced us The Casual Chain, very similar to a well known biological phenomenon, which is called butterfly effect, it suggests that a butterfly in Amazon jungle slams its wings will lead to a storm in South Asia. One thing always is associated with another, then Hales referee another philosophy concept which is in the opposite, there is no god because all these tragedies happened on earth, for example, the German killed 6 millions Jews in Europe, earthquake in Indonesia coast took away 20 thousands lives in 2004, numerous terror attacks result in life loss, etc. If god really exist, why doesn’t he put up the fire before it hurt us. The weakness of this chapter is it failed observing the explanation on “why god did nothing to prevent life loss from tragedy “, in fact, in some religion, for example Judaism, God punish people by releasing natural disasters. In Judaism, god also revive the dead. From this point of view, I do not think this chapter is fully …show more content…
He discussed about the sameness and differences in physical level and psychological level. I like his example of “you at this moment right now is the same you-baby 20 years ago, however, we all are unique, I am not the same as my friends. He mentioned a numbers of things share the same features within itself over time changing, DNA, fingerprint, and also a number of example of difference, for example, change brain, aging in appearance. From a psychological level, however, he believes that one is changing all the time because we are thinking about different things all the time, Hales used the comparison to illustrate this level: desire—new desire—newer desire—newest desire. I agree with his suggestion, because we do change, despite my name is Jiajin, but will my name still be Jiajin in 20 years? Or, I liked Green Day yesterday, tomorrow maybe I will like listening to Beyoncé, then as my interests changing, I might not be the same I
Philosophy as a house of concepts is often considered complicated for people to read and understand, however, Hales’s This Is Philosophy is easy to pick up, his language are simple enough for me to catch his mind. I enjoyed reading this book much because it shifted the way I think about philosophy, what came to my mind was a bunch of difficult, abstract, illusion kinds of senses when I heard of the word ‘Philosophy’, after I read this book, I understand that philosophy actually deals with the very basic humanities that we all have thought about.
The book presents a various of topics and ideas that be discussed in our everyday life, the first chapter investigates ethics, it addresses my attention to …show more content…
Before I read this chapter, I thought God as a universe that beyond touchable, invisible, probably doesn’t exist. But God in this chapter, is well explained, it is a faith, a confidence feeling of our own. In the field of philosophy, there’s an argument in whether God exists or does not. Hales introduced us The Casual Chain, very similar to a well known biological phenomenon, which is called butterfly effect, it suggests that a butterfly in Amazon jungle slams its wings will lead to a storm in South Asia. One thing always is associated with another, then Hales referee another philosophy concept which is in the opposite, there is no god because all these tragedies happened on earth, for example, the German killed 6 millions Jews in Europe, earthquake in Indonesia coast took away 20 thousands lives in 2004, numerous terror attacks result in life loss, etc. If god really exist, why doesn’t he put up the fire before it hurt us. The weakness of this chapter is it failed observing the explanation on “why god did nothing to prevent life loss from tragedy “, in fact, in some religion, for example Judaism, God punish people by releasing natural disasters. In Judaism, god also revive the dead. From this point of view, I do not think this chapter is fully …show more content…
He discussed about the sameness and differences in physical level and psychological level. I like his example of “you at this moment right now is the same you-baby 20 years ago, however, we all are unique, I am not the same as my friends. He mentioned a numbers of things share the same features within itself over time changing, DNA, fingerprint, and also a number of example of difference, for example, change brain, aging in appearance. From a psychological level, however, he believes that one is changing all the time because we are thinking about different things all the time, Hales used the comparison to illustrate this level: desire—new desire—newer desire—newest desire. I agree with his suggestion, because we do change, despite my name is Jiajin, but will my name still be Jiajin in 20 years? Or, I liked Green Day yesterday, tomorrow maybe I will like listening to Beyoncé, then as my interests changing, I might not be the same I