Materialism

a “false” life. Instead of living his own life sincerely, Ivan was more concerned about doing what is expected from him by those that he sees as belonging in high social standings and what the elite class thinks is “right”: a life dominated by materialism and disregard for…

society feels because of the illusion of merriment in wealth and dependency on materials. The movie and the character embody naturalistic ideals since physical commodities dictate his life. However, the conjunction of Christianity, naturalism, and materialism are not justifiable based on a Christian…

INTRO: The theory of materialism is a branch of monism that proposes the world is made up solely of materialistic objects. Socrates spoke of this theory and referred to it as the Mind-Body Problem, the question of whether the conscious mind and physical body coexist, or exist individually. Because materialism is a monistic theory, the mind and body are not able to coexist; therefore, we are forced to decide which one truly exists. THESIS: While the Mind-Body Problem is a theory with many…

In continuing his explanation, Tinder points to one of the masters of this mode of thinking: Thomas Hobbes. According to Hobbesian philosophy, human life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” and ones essence is that of eternal war against all others (Tinder 27). Hobbes breaks his understanding of human nature down further by explaining that there is a psychological and ontological level of estrangement (Tinder 27-28). The psychological level of ones estrangement exists because all…

Personhood Eric Olson, E. Jonathan Lowe, and Lynn Rudder Baker each has different accounts for what a person is. In this paper, I will talk about their points of view on personhood and compare and contrast their ideas while talking about my own account on personhood. Olson believes that we are all animal. As a result a person is matter that has mental features. Matter is a physical substance that has mass and occupies space, as distinct from immaterial substance like mind and spirit. Mental…

When we think of the science of philosophy we often ponder its use. Other sciences such as biology and physics explore the universe and our reality so we can better understand the environment around us and what our physical state is. When we began to wonder what our inner thoughts were, we created psychology to understand the human nature; however, that still was not enough. We longed for more. Philo is Greek for love, while sophia means wisdom. Philosophy is defined as the love of wisdom.…

As we turn to the issue of atheism, I believe some framework is necessary. Atheism is typically defined as a lack of belief in God and it is in the definition of God that the issue arises. Clearly, the two philosophers have a different definition of the word God. As hopefully made clear in the second and third paragraph, Spinoza thinks that God is an impersonal summation of all things (i.e. substance), while Berkeley thinks that God is a personal, thinking thing responsible for but distinct from…

The metaphysics of ancient Hawai’i are unique and reflect metaphysics of both dualistic and monistic ways of thinking. As I address that theory in this paper I will be comparing and contrasting the difference in the Western philosophies of Plato to that of old Hawai’i before the coming of the Christians missionaries in 1820. I will also explain the ways in which I found ancient Hawaiians were also similar to Eastern monistic ways of thinking. In both cases, Hawai’i seems to be unique because…

The physical medium and the mental medium work in an entirely different way. When modern spiritualism came about they dedicated their lives to developing spiritually, they had home circles. In this present world people are pre-occupied with social media additionally mobiles, lending itself more to mental mediumship and less dedication. To explain the difference between physical and mental mediumship, we will look at two words ectoplasm and mind. Lets look at physical mediumship, it requires a…

This semester we learned about the competing notions of what a true human being is, but what is a human being? Definitions with the words “homo sapiens”, “speech”, and “living” are bound to come up. Many philosophers have taken it upon themselves to define what it means to be a human being, and although similar in ways, their thoughts differ in many ways as well. Thinkers such as St. Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, and Thomas Hobbes…