Civil Disobedience

I would definitely endorse civil disobedience in case of an immoral politic such as Nazism inspired by Hitler. Under his governance Jews were treated as animals and slaughtered. This brutality has negated all fundamental human rights with the most imperative right to exist. Living being either human or animal cannot be undervalued in any case because all have the same power of being. Therefore, no one can decide about others life or death. In such occurrences as wars, humans are tested on basic values and priorities and are put in inconvenient positions of an oppressor or a victim. However, each of us must take a responsibility of one’s action and decide what is just or unjust. From my own reflection there is no justification and no excuse when there is violation of human right. Thus I agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all. Those who have power should not concentrate on the sinister desire to have a control over those who are underprivileged because it leads to an unjust decision. Government should consider the good of its citizens and not be directed by personal gain..

"...You can only be free if I am free" - Clarence Darrow

Mill and Marx touched an issue of freedom that is contingent on how much the state put force on you or how much you can intervene to revolt for it. These are two opposite stances that represent passive and active factors of individual approach toward freedom. As Mill claims freedom is our right, thus we do not really bother if the state does not bother us, whereas Marx points out at our involvement and constant vigilance because freedom is not guarantee all the time.
We cannot be fully free because we have a certain limitation in forms of laws, regulations and personal commitments that are imposed to us due to the fact that we are social beings, meaning there are others to consider. Freedom is only attained when we are able to detach ourselves from the outside world and immerse in our own thoughts that liberates our individuality.
Freedom is something that we all want to protect and sustain, however we are easily forget about it and become passive until it is necessary to get involved in case of injustice or other form of slavery.
Therefore, freedom should be always cherished in reference to the universal principle of every human being.
Mill and Marx pointed very important aspect of freedom, as a right and as a force.

“…Let us reflect: the best way to satisfy all our desires and make all our plans come to fruition is to let them go.” Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Religious beliefs seem to be associated with superstitions, humility and passive role of taking destiny as it is because today’s world has different values for personal happiness and fulfillments. Our value and happiness is measured by the look, richness, independence and personality that is carefully determined by the fashion icons, media or celebrities. Who needs religion in their old fashion form?
What drives people’s imagination and makes them happy today is an exotic vacation, well paid job, sexual pleasures, and expensive, precious material goods such as cars, clothes, etc. It seems like shoes are not for foot protection but for showing a unique style, food is not for sustaining life but for enjoyment of new taste experiences. We have series of guides how to achieve personal satisfaction and live fully through various TV commercials, TV shows and magazines. The spiritual development is seen as ecstasy in form of drugs or sex. Those cravings and desires are playing major role in today’s contemporary United States which main concerns is economical prosperity and personal satisfaction, thus it is hard to live according to any religion because on each corner inducement is hiding.
However, we have a great opportunity to test our strength to various temptations. Living in a country of freedom in all spheres of life we can have a perfect environment to discipline ourselves and master our virtues. It is only a personal choice how we want to live: according to current trends and time spirit or be faithful to one’s priorities and values. If we know what is important we would be able to live without desires in any place. A discipline is our virtue and only through mastering our desirable qualities we are able to discover true happiness of our real selves...

Philosophy of religion

Religion is a part of human knowledge that goes beyond logic and reason and is based on human’s experiences of various moral and ethical issues and concerns about his/her place in the universe. Religion gives universal guidance to understand universe and human nature; its main doctrine is a belief without a doubt. Philosophy takes a different course to understand the same dilemma about human nature and purpose and meaning of existence. Because philosophy is an affection for wisdom its main attribute is to question, think and take different approaches towards understanding. This way towards gaining knowledge contribute to understanding such dilemma as justice, ethical value, good and evil, freedom, will, love from different perspective .

Those themes are found in the Bible, Koran and Torah and represent the same meaning in all religion. Religion beliefs on certain issues are strictly based on faith but philosophical thinking is based on justification but not necessarily contradiction. I think faith and religious beliefs are experienced individually but its common purpose is building strong fundaments for harmony based on Good which is represented by God. Philosophy creates theories that contribute to evaluation of beliefs by developing arguments that would go beyond individual faith and universal truths.

Are we programmed like computers?

Computers are creation of human’s imagination and they represent effort that human put to expand knowledge about intelligence. Therefore computers are programmed to fulfill certain purpose and are constructed based on human’s pattern of thoughts. Which means computer cannot think by itself but it uses data already inputted for different interpretations. Because computers have limited knowledge and cannot have a control over it, thus cannot create new things whereas humans can.
Reflecting on the humans, I would say that partially we are programmed in certain way. Our body consists of genes that determine our diseases, preferences or life span. Another example is that some function of our body cannot be simply controlled; they just function beyond our will such as heart or other organs. Another idea would be the religious approach. Human believing in God think they have special purpose to fulfill and that their lives are already determined whatever choice is made that was meant to be.
However we also have a free will to decide and make choices. Even thou we are part of a society that shapes our perception about reality and gives directions what is right what is wrong; we still hold our own, private piece of self that is able to surpass all the rules and conventions to fulfill own true purpose. In case of education and language, those acquired skills can gives us only advantage in communicating with an external world. However they are useless when dealing with our inner thinking that goes beyond the rules of structure or laws of science. Inside we are free…and able to express ourselves in a very unconventional way...

Mind and Body

Body is a biological organism, a machine, a part of a nature and its laws that undergo various physical changes and chemical reactions. Mind is a state of being, existence built upon consciousness, emotions and ability to construct concepts and imaginary representation of feelings and ideas. However what makes body live and able to function is not operation of its components such as cells, organs and systems but mind, which represents our soul, energy and sparkle of life.
Let’s take the example of a car. In order to function, it needs sparkle of energy, an ignition. The same thing applies to the body. It needs mind for ignition to be able to function. The body needs fuel in form of energy from the food but mind is fed by our experiences, memory, perception and feelings. Without a mind body would represents a vegetative existence.
Mind cannot be simply generated from the brain operations; it needs independent stimulus to exist, the control of our self that dictates our mental being. Let’s take the same example with a car that has a body and is ignited but cannot move and operate without control of outside stimuli (driver). This form of control can be represented by our consciousness. This inner awareness separates our body from our mental states of being.
Another idea of the mind as a separate substance is the representation it creates such as dreams or artistic creativity. Our body is mobile only in one physical reality, however our mind can shifts in many realities, thus can detach itself from the material existence. When we read a book we can easily imagine being in the fictional reality but our body cannot. When we dream our mind experiences the symbolic world and imaginary realities but our body cannot.
Therefore, I think mind and body are one fused substance with different properties that can distinguish one from another….by having physical existence and mental existence.

…α…knowledge…Ω….

The philosophy of pragmatism and feminism provide valuable insight for understanding concept of knowledge. Each of these philosophies has its own unique vision that adds its imperative part to the overall heritage of philosophical thoughts. With this reflection in mind my theory about knowledge synthesizes all efforts already made. I favor the holistic approach for getting knowledge rather than narrow it to one major factor that solely supplies us with necessary cognitive understanding.
Therefore, knowledge is an ability to collect data from various sources through senses, reason and subjective and objective perception. Sensual experiences are crucial in terms of survival. Senses play major role in acquiring knowledge because human are biological organisms with a living body that perceive reality through hearing, tasting, smelling, touching and seeing. Those capabilities helped humans survive, differentiate objects, and create stable condition to live. Reason and operation of our mind help us think logically, make analysis and relate simple operation or object into more complex images or ideas. Our knowledge also depends on our subjective perspective, our self created by our specificity to react or feel in certain way. Moreover our predisposition and sensitivity to prioritize some values determines our knowledge. Objective perception involves cultural and social background as well as gender that shapes our way of seeing things through this objective “lenses”.
There are different types of knowledge such as theoretical/scientific knowledge that characterizes various laws from biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics. Other types include social or communication knowledge and practical/situational knowledge.
However knowledge is not something detached. It is an activity of our experiences that involved our body, mind and spirit and is constantly restructured based on the situational context of our lives.
Therefore knowledge of each individual is shaped by internal and external factors that collide with each other, fuse within and interrelate to one another. This complex function makes our reality full of ideas, colors and sounds that are unique to our own nature and existence....

Empiricism

Human beings are dominated by their physical existence because as biological organisms they perceive reality mainly by senses. If we would not have sensual experiences, we would have been closed in our minds not able to survive. Before human developed sophisticated ability to think, reason and communicate, they rely on their senses to satisfy their basic needs as hanger, thirst, place to hide or sleep and something to warm up. Sensual experiences drives our imagination and stimulates our brains to construct our vision of reality and self from received data of sound, sight, taste, touch and smell. However, knowledge requires many different stimulators and factors, not just senses. The areas of human knowledge such as astronomy, biology or physics requires logic and reasoning but without senses we would not be able to observe things, compare one to another or simply explore them by physical means.
We are furnished with mind, spirit and sensual receptors within the body, therefore, all those parts are work along to create unique data of our life. Hence I would say that knowledge is composed of rational representation of reality through mind processes, senses stimulating approach to fulfill those representation and spirit that help us go beyond of those experiences...

“Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is...it is her shadow" - Philip James Bailey

“The range of a doubt can vary depending on the level of certainty in one’s belief. People tend to trust in their own sets of principles because it gives them sense of control over their reality. Reality can be perceived trough our senses which formulate the physical, tangible presence of the things around us. The physical world limits our perspective of reality, however, what can be heard, touched, seen, smelt or tasted seem to be an axiom.
Reality changes around us and within us along with our age and exposure to the life experiences. During this voyage of acquiring knowledge, our sense of reality passes trough different stages. I always wonder how children can flexible switch from “real life” to their imaginary reality. It seems that for them there is no difference; however we adults can definitely distinguish the real world from the fantasy. But is it always true and obvious, what make us so certain? If we can only start questioning we can possibly find that we live somehow in many realities at the same time on different facets of consciousness.
How about the dreams, fiction and paintings? Are they not representing the vision of the reality? If people are able to create reality how do we know that we are not living in the parallel world of an illusion and false certainty? Methodological skepticism is a way of critical view on our self made image of the world that uncovers our limitation for cognitive experience”...

“Cogito ergo sum” – I think, therefore I am.

Allegory of the cave is a multidimensional story that presents wide spectrum of ideas about human progress of discovering reality, acquiring knowledge and facing own limitation and challenges of one’s assumptions. Socrates forces us to reflect about the reality and our existence within it and provokes us to rediscover our potential of thinking as a powerful key to gain wisdom.
To understand the true massage of this allegory, Socrates gives us some clues by pointing at the key subjects such as people as prisoners, shadow on the wall, dark cave and fire behind the prisoners. Those figurative images are linked together to reveal deeper, hidden idea of dimness in human society. In my own reflection, people are representing prisoners of their own physical existence which is their body and lack of foresight for important values in their lives. The chains which do not allow them to move are the sets of rules learned and accepted from and by the society they grew up in. People are imprisoned in their own shallow reality of perceiving world through senses and see only what is in the front of them. Cave is the reality of known rules and learned way of thinking, therefore people are isolated in this ironic world of playing shadows and they are not aware of the fire that is behind them that create shadow. They live in the world of false pretence and in the gleam of fire; however they are sincere about the images on the wall that represent their true reality. The human beings are concerned only about the material world that in fact is elusive, mortal and imperfect. Socrates is pessimistic about humans who waste their potential of becoming aware of the soul that represent real, true person. He thinks that our existence has no value without philosophical education. Our true identity should be refined from the earthy drives and desires by the process of acquiring knowledge about the spirit through learning and questioning. Soul is eternal, perfect and is a real person that stimulates our true self by means of intellectual enlightening. Therefore philosophy has an imperative role and should be a part of our everyday lives because it opens our inner eye to search and question. Only critical view of reality can set us free and help us to find the truth about us. Everyone is able to liberated oneself only if the ideas and creativity is a purpose of achieving happiness and fulfillment.

First reflection about an importance of philosophy

......From my perspective philosophy is affection for wisdom that is acquired during our lifetime experiences and from our reflections of reality. Reality is complex and can be viewed differently by each individual therefore everyone can contribute valuable observation about events or forces that create reality such as life, death, good, evil, nature and universe.

This course is imperative for me in terms of evaluating my own thoughts about obvious matters that we all face throughout the life such as suffering, love, morality, happiness or freedom. Those subjects were already introduced and contemplated by many great people from the past who asked the same universal questions as we have today: who I am?, what is my role in this world?, am I free? Therefore, I hope to gain fundamental understanding of the ideas and concepts introduced by people from various historical époques who forces others to think and reflect on reality that surrounds us.

The most worthwhile experience will be participation of all classmates to initiate interesting, inspiring discussion. Today’s world seems to dash along faster and faster forgetting about the reflection that forces to speculate, stop and escape for a moment to immerse in our own thoughts . People seem to get all the answers from TV and other authorities overlooking their own unique vision of the world. Therefore this course will be imperative to help me understand myself better, the universe and importance of other forces that shape our inner self....

My favorite poet, Zbigniew Herbert

Mr. Cogito and the Imagination

Mr. Cogito never trusted
tricks of the imagination

the piano at the top of the Alps
played false concerts for him

he didn't appreciate labyrinths
the Sphinx filled him with loathing

he lived in a house with no basement
without mirrors of dialectics

jungles of tangled images
were not his home

he would rarely soar
on the wings of metaphor

and then he fell like Icarus
into the embrace of the Great Mother

he adored tautologies
explanations

idem per idem

that a bird is a bird
slavery means slavery

a knife is a knife
death remains death

he loved the flat horizon
a straight line
the gravity of the earth