But not moving. This moment lasts an eternity, or an instant, I don't know
For this disputation, I had the pleasure of arguing against the topic of be it resolved that you can convince a non-believer to affirm the existence of God using philosophical arguments. As the opposing side, Sarah and I counter argued the following: the argument from motion, the ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, and the moral argument. The argument from motion argues that it is only possible to experience that which exists, and people experience God, therefore God must exist; however it can be counter argued that since faith cannot be demonstrated or experienced, as it is unseen, God cannot exist.
Paradoxes Now with the possibility of backwards causation there arises some paradoxes within the view. Namely, there are three different types of paradoxes to talk about, the Bootstrap Paradox, the Consistency Paradox, and Newcomb’s Paradox. The one that we will focus on, and I believe holds that most weight against backwards causation is Newcomb’s Paradox. The paradox in short is that a person is given a choice between two boxes, by a fortune teller who can fully predict the choice of the person. The boxes contain one thousand dollars in a clear box, box A, and an opaque box, box B, that either contains one million dollars or no money at all.
However, Descartes is indeed certain of the fact that he is a thinking being, and that he exists. As a result of this argument, Descartes makes a conclusion that the things he perceives clearly and distinctly cannot be false, and are therefore true (Blanchette). This clear and distinct perception is an important component to the argument that Descartes makes in his fifth meditation for the existence of God. This paper explains Descartes ' proof of God 's existence from Descartes ' fifth meditation, Pierre Gassendi 's objection to this proof, and then offers the paper 's author 's opinion on both the proof and objection.
In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, he explains the soul and comes to the conclusion that the soul is immortal. Through describing the last hours of Socrates life before his execution, he lays out three arguments in support of the idea that while the body may cease to exist the soul cannot perish. In this paper, I will explicate Socrates three arguments for the immortality of the soul and their objections. Then I will argue on the presupposition of the Law of Conservation of Mass, that the universe, entailing the soul, must be cyclical. The Law of Conservation of Mass
Since there is no divine figure that dictates life, there must be some rational explanation as to how matter comes to be. Within his first principle he states, “Nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing”. He suggests that all matter exists in the form of atoms, and although these atoms are not visible to the naked eye, they are still present. Unsurprisingly, this idea is radically different than any other concept of being that the Romans previously held. As a result, Lucretius’ writings were likely not well received by the audience.
In this paper, I will deliver a reconstruction of Descartes’ Cogito Argument and my reasoning to validate it as indubitable. I will do so by justifying my interpretations through valid arguments and claim, by showcasing examples with reasoning. Rene Descartes is a French Philosopher of the 17th century, who formulated the philosophical Cogito argument by the name of ‘cogito ergo sum,’ also known as “I think, therefore, I am.” Rene was a skeptic philosopher amongst many scholastic philosophers of his time. To interpret his cogito argument as indubitable and whether it could serve as a foundational belief, he took a skeptical approach towards the relations between thoughts and existence.
Seen with the Cartesian idea of ‘I think, therefore I am” which is alarmingly a prevalent and an established belief in philosophy. But upon further inspection, the proposition “I think, therefore I am” is something that we could make sense of within a Buddhist framework. Assume Descartes’ ‘I’ is the five skandhas, the ‘I’ (or the fives skandhas) are causing an illusory effect which lead to the assumption of transient, tentative existence. Using radical reductionism, we cannot assume the existence of the world as we know it because the world as we know it is a product of the five skandhas. Therefore, any concept of “I’ we hold is illusory in nature, caused by the five
Thomas Aquinas begins by making the not too startling observation that things move and that there is
This essay will now begin the task of laying out the objection to Descartes’
Rene Descartes statement, “I think, therefore, I am” laid the foundation for his Cogito Argument in the Mediations. Throughout his groundwork we come to interpret that “I think, whatever thinks, must exists, so I exist, and whatever exists is a thing, so I exist as a
The last Ice Age is dated to have occurred about 1.8 million years ago and it is stated that it approximately lasted for 11,700 years; concluding the last Ice Age our planet has seen a huge shift in the glaciers that once had covered large parts of earth. Over the last 800,000 years, in a period that is called the Pleistocene, we see a long-standing pattern in ice sheet growth and decline across glacial (cold) and interglacial (warmer) periods.1 Global warming should no longer be a topic of debate, here within the United State, about whether global warming is really happening, or if humans are the reason behind global warming. Instead we need to discuss and educate ourselves of the scientific evidences that have shown the effects of Global
The traditional claim of all Cosmological Arguments is defined as “something outside the universe is responsible to explain the existence of the universe” (PowerPoint 380). In the “causal argument,” or the First Cause Argument on the cosmological argument, “something” outside of the universe that is supposed to inform us about the existence of the universe is argued to be explained as God. As the first cause argument goes into depth and with the help of Thomas Aquinas, it is easy to see how God is responsible for explaining the existence of the universe around us. Within the first cause argument on the cosmological argument the following premises and conclusions are discussed: Premise 1: There exists things that are caused. Meaning that
However if the original thing is what is, and the resulting being is also what is, then nothing has actually come into being and so therefor no change has occurred. Carrying on with this point brings us to the idea of if the original thing is what is not, then according to Parmenides himself this is an impossibility because “nothing comes from nothingness.” “The first of those who studied philosophy were misled in their search for truth and the nature of things by their inexperience, which as it were thrust them into another path. So they say that none of the things that are either comes to be or passes out of existence, because what comes to be must do so either from what is or from what is not, both of which are impossible. For what is cannot come to be (because it is already), and from what is not nothing could have come to be (because something must be underlying).”
JESUS AND HIS FATHER The key to the Trinitarian doctrine is the Father-Son relationship. In Christian theology, God is symbolised as a divine Father primarily because Christ is symbolised as the divine Son. Not the other way around. The Gospel of Mark describes Jesus as the Son of man and the Son of God.
