WIT

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To My Knowledge...

So i just finished the epistemology part of my philosophy class.

Two main thoughts

1. Rationalism - we gain knowledge from reason
2. Empiricism - we gain knowledge from sense experience

After reading about the leaders in these fields, i lean towards empiricism. However, i don't think we are born with a tabula rasa [blank slate]. I think we are born with some innate ideas that guide our humanity. So I'm not an extremest for either side.

But what about knowledge from Divine revelation from God? Would that fall under experience? I feel like it should have its own catagory. I'm sure i'm not the first to think about this, so i wonder what that philosophy is called - knowledge from God...

... Revelationism?

Maybe people haven't used this because the "knowledge" we have from God isn't "certain".

However, I've always considered God's revelatation [His Word] to be the most reliable source of knowledge in the universe.

My Prayer

I’m trying hard to fall in love with you

Cuz I know you’re the best one to pursue

You’ve given me a reason for each day

Help my heart understand

When my eyes cannot see, I pray

Fill me up with your love

________________________

*I wrote some music to this, but i don't have any recording equipment. One day.

"Meditation"

Rene Descartes (reh-nay day-cart)

(1596-1650)

French

Went to college from age 8 to 16

Studied logic, philosophy, and mathematics

His work "Meditations" was published in 1641*

MEDITATIONS ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY IN WHICH THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN MIND AND BODY ARE DEMONSTRATED

• He searched for an undoubted truth. So he used the method of doubt. Anything he could possible doubt for any reason, he discarded. This is important to understand, because this is why he threw off using God as a basis for any of his truth. He, as well as I, believed that we know God via faith not fact.
• He discards any knowledge we get from sense perception, because ours senses can deceive us (like how a stick looks like it bends when you stick it in water).
• He discards knowledge from the senses because he could be insane, and imagining everything he sees, feels, etc.
• He discards knowledge from the senses because he could be dreaming.
• He doubts the sciences because they "are very dubious and uncertain" but verifies mathematical truths because they are true whether or not he is dreaming.
• He discards knowledge from the senses because God could be an evil genius who "has employed his while energies in deceiving me."

• Thus he concludes that the mind is more knowable than the body.
• He doubts everything he sees, and so discards it.
• Then he says, "I myself, am I knot at least something... was I not then likewise persuaded that I did not exist... of a surety I myself did exist since I persuaded myself of something... then without a doubt I exist also if [God] deceives me, and let him deceive me as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing so long as I think that I am something.
• Thus he concludes "I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it."

We are more familiar with I think therefore I am... but there it is.

COMMENTS

I always considered Descartes to be a heathen because he discarded God as a source of truth, but according to his method of doubt, it fits fine. I am good with it now.

In the beginning of his meditation, he stated that he waited until he was retired--removed from all the passions of youth, distractions and ambitions, etc--to start on his journey of finding indubitable truth. This makes a lot of sense. I feel like a lot of these concepts would be easier to hold on to if i wasn't in the place Descartes specifically avoided before meditating on such topics.

I love his method of doubt, and all the ideas he had. I recognize it wasn't perfect, but i still enjoy his thoughts. After all they are, simply put, meditations.

I doing this summery/endnotes because it helps with my studies (I have an exam tomorrow), and it fits perfectly under why I write this blog: (one of the reasons being) to write about what i think about what i read. Any thoughts on Descartes?

Philosophers According to Wikipedia

Philosophy as a profession doesn't really exist. I'm taking an Intro to Philosophy class, and i was interested in what each philosopher really does / did for his/her career. So i looked up on wikipedia what each person is known for first, and this is what i found.

Saint Anselm "The Ontological Argument" - monk

Saint Thomas Aquinas "Whether God Exists" - priest

William Paley "The Teleological Argument" - British Christian apologist

David Hume - "Why Does God Let People Suffer" - Scottish philosopher

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Russian writer

Soren Kierkegaard "The Leap of Faith and the Limits of Reason" - Danish philosopher

William James "The Will to Believe" - American psychologist

John Wisdom "Gods" - British philosopher

Plato "Myth of the Cave" - Classical greek philosopher

Rene Descartes "Meditation" - French philosopher

Lewis Carroll "Through the Looking Glass" - English author

Bertrand Russell "Appearance and Reality - British philosopher

John Locke "Where Our Ideas Come From" - English philosopher

George Berkeley "To Be is To Be Perceived" - Anglo-Irish philosopher

Lorraine Code "What Can She Know" - (not on wikipedia)

Jonathan Swift "Getting Rid of Words" - Anglo-Irish satirist

Ludwig Wittgenstein "Meaning as Use" - Austrian-British philospher

Benjamin Whorf "Language, Thought and Reality" - American linguist

Steven Pinker "The Language Instinct" - Canadian-American psychologist

Stephanie Ross "How Words Hurt" - (not on wikipedia)

Epicurus "The Pursuit of Pleasure" - Ancient Greek philosopher

Confucius "The Analects" - Chinese thinker

Aristotle "Happiness and The Good Life" - Greek philosopher

Immanuel Kant "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" - German philosopher

John Stuart Mill "Utilitarianism" - English philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche "The Natural History of Morals" - German philosopher

A.J. Ayer "Emotivism" - British philosopher

Claudia Card "One Feminist View of Ethics" - (not on wikipedia)

Bob Kane "Through the Moral Maze" - comic book artist

Baron d'Holbach "Are We Cogs in the Universe" - French-German author

John Hospers "Meaning and Free Will" - presidential candidate

Jean-Paul Sartre ""Freedom and Responsibility" - French philosopher

B.F. Skinner "Freedom and the Control of Men" - American psychologist

Hmm... 16/33 are actually philosophers (or at least known as philosophers according to wiki). Since i'm still officially a math major (and not a philosopher yet), i can reliably tell you that is just under 50%. Although i had originally wanted to research what their actual occupation was, i suppose using wiki's first vocation only tells us what they are knows for, and since philosophical writings are really cool, thats what alot of them are known for. I imagine the only real philosopher by vocation isn't on this list: Socrates. He didn't write anything down. He didn't make any cash. But then again, neither did Jesus. Hmmm...

It's good to be back on th'internet.

Big Break 2010

This is basically a journal excerpt

_______________________

I feel like I finally understand what it means to be free from sin. Hersh explained that when he called "The Great Exchange." The Great Exchange was when Jesus died for our sins. At that moment, He traded all of His righteousness for all our sin. He suffered the punishment of our sin so that we could experience what Paul talks about in Romans 8:1-2 and II Corinthians 5:21 -

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in

Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit

of life set me free from the law of sin and death."

---

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him

we might become the righteousness of God."

There is nothing I can do, even through obedience, that will bring me to a point of being more righteous before God. If there was anything I could that would make me more righteous, then Jesus' death wasn't quite enough. We will sin, but after we sin we should not believe the lie that says we aren't good enough for God to use us. I have heard a few stories this week about how God has used non-Christians to lead others Christ miraculously, and then countless stories from CRU college students this week about how God has worked miracles to open doors and share the hope Jesus has to offer to what will hopefully be hundreds by the end of the week (which I suppose is counting, so ignore the colloquialism used at the beginning of the sentence).