Empiricism

The question of relationship between belief and evidence is important to the development of society today.The concern is what exactly we are to believe when there is no evidence available William James was a leading American psychologist and philosopher in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. James maintains that pure reason is never the final determinant of what we believe(Warren). Does our will to have beliefs come from families , Society , our enviorment or because we have no other choice…

Realism is a period of art that started in the 1850’s and has continued on in various forms since then. In a literary sense Realism is the attempt to portray life as it is and not, like the Romantics, as it should be. This philosophy is the heart of Realism and “has its origins in Descartes and Locke” who laid the groundwork for Empirical thought (Ian Watts, Rise of the Novel). Realism portrays society by using Empirical methods, the human senses, to create an objective view of reality in the…

“We are the good guys, we are carrying the fire.” Said the man to his son in one of my favorite books; The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. This post apocalyptic novel tells a tale of a father and his child wandering a road trying to survive in a desolate world. I value this piece of literature above most fictitious books because McCarthy shows that morality is not socially constructed, but rather is within each person and it’s humanity 's duty to make sure the flame never goes out. McCarthy’s…

Part 1 : Comparative analysis – small group development theory (500 words) In 1965, Bruce W. Tuckman developed a theory in which he sought to explain how a team develops over time through stages : forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning published in his study "Developmental sequence in small groups". Tuckman 's theory is based on a research he led analyzing over 50 articles that dealt with small groups development. The last stage was isadded in his follow up study in 1977 with…

In Landau’s book, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Chapter seven focuses on psychological egoism. The backbone of this theory is that all human actions are driven by human’s egotistical desires. Landau defends this theory by stating, “Psychological egoism is a theory about human motivation: it tells us that our only motivation is to make ourselves better off.” (Landau 106) This means in order for someone to adopt this theory they must believe that even trivial events that seem very altruistic are…

Political science is a study attempting to understand human behavior as it relates to politics. As such, political science, like any science, requires hypotheses, testable objectives to try and narrow down the large scope that is the global politic scene. Nonetheless, as human behavior forms the basis of political science, it can be inherently difficult to quantify. This begs the question as to whether or not political science can be considered a hard, quantifiable science—one based on…

The scientific method is a procedure that is used by scientists now and in the past, dating back to the seventeenth century. The scientific method consists of observation, measurement, and experiment, and the creation and testing of hypotheses. There are several steps and different components to the scientific method that will (hopefully) answer the scientists’ questions, by the completion of the experiment. There are countless different reasons as to why a scientist would use the…

In Spörrle and Stich’s (2010) article, “Sleeping in Safe Places,” the researchers investigated people’s sleeping place preferences from the point-of-view of evolutionary psychology. Since there is little research about the topic, they focused on exploring numerous ‘testable’ predictions that originate from their fundamental hypothesis that posits people’s choices for places where they can sleep safely have changed to [sleeping] places where they think they are protected from possible aggressors…

P1. If pleasure is what we value most and we will experience more pleasure by doing x rather than doing y, then we should do x over y P2. We will experience more pleasure by plugging into the Experience Machine than not plugging into the Experience Machine C1: If all that matters to us is maximising pleasure then we should want to plug into the experience machine. (P1&P2) P3. We have reason to not want to plug into the Experience Machine C2. Therefore, experiencing as much pleasure as possible…

Considered one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper is mostly known for his contribution to philosophy based on his scrutiny on the scientific method. Popper played an important role in combining the work of science and philosophy in attempts to uncover the truth. When Popper becomes a reader in logic and the scientific method is where we begin to see the emergence of the Popper we know, especially in the development of his views regarding science and philosophy. Unlike…