https://my.moonshotacademy.cn/serene-zhang/idealism-and-materialism/
Daily Archives: June 24, 2020
A Brief Introduction of Science
peter
Introduction
Frankly, the relationship between Philosophy and Science, is not hard to say. Through the ancient time to modern life, Science is always base on Philosophy. Philosophy, the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. Science, the study of nature of knowledge. The answer is quite clear, but the truth is not as simple as definition.
Main
What is science
Under our cognition, Science should answer those real problem but it is really hard and current cannot relate our daily life. Science is a method to tell you how does things work, how does substance move. It does not care any personal ideas and any subjective ideas. It is totally objective.
When we observe a hydrogen atom, we do not care what is hydrogen, what is the composition of hydrogen and how does it form. We only need to know that hydrogen atom have one electronic. Even that is not totally convinced because Quantum mechanics prove that the hydrogen atom have the possibility that do not have one electronic. It can be said that Science comes from observation, and it is to find a basic law in the observation of samples.
A famous Greek philosopher Aristotle gave some Scientific theory, like: Force is the only factor to maintain the motion of substance. But it already proved wrong because Force is the factor of change of motion. How did we proved it? Imagine there is a cube, it does not subject to any force or the net force on it is zero, the cube will be rest or constantly moving. But there is no any situation like that, and all the factor is based on imagination so the result is from our imagination, too. And those imagination based on those laws, it is a rational inference.
So Science, is the law of nature from observation, it is also the rational inference. It is more like a combination of empiricism and rationalism. It need the experience of daily life and also need the precise analyzing and calculating.
Science and Philosophy
Since the civilization of ancient Greece, the word science appeared as Greek φυσικός, same to the word Physic. In Greek it means nature. In the Greek era, philosophers were doing scientists, and Aristotle had a lot of research in the field of science.
There is Greek a word called metaphysics. Meta, means beyond something, so metaphysics means beyond physics. This is an independent subject and Aristotle called it “the first philosophy”. From the Greek philosophy’s definition, Science is a branch of philosophy, Science is nature and Philosophy is nature of nature.
After Renaissance, the developing of Science, make the Science more and more important and even some people appealed let those scientist replace philosopher. For example, the same phenomenon, an apple drop down to ground. An ancient Greek Philosopher might say, because apple love to keep close with ground. Newton stand up and say: because Apple have weight, earth have gravity!
Well, seems in the development of Science, philosophy could not help more. So, does the philosophy worth to exist? Maybe we could think something not exist. But Some naturalist appeal to not think anything not existing, like God and Cthulhu. Because it is not ‘scientific’.
The answer is, yes, definitely yes.
There are two question in the world. One, I know what exactly it is, I know how to do, we called it problems. Second, I do not know what exactly it is, I have no idea to treat that one, we called it mysteries.
The first question is more like: Does this medicine could heal the disease? Does the Goldbach conjecture correct? Science could solved those questions, because science could bring some hypothesis and wait to prove it correct. Scientist based on the condition they already knew, they could bring up with countless hypothesis, but prove it by logic and fact is taking time.
The second question is more like: What is the dark matter? Nobody have ever seen the dark matter, but the only thing we could make sure that the dark matter is existing. Without dark matter our universe would collapse, is the inference from conservation of energy. Science exactly could not help answer those question, because we do not know what is dark matter so we do not know how to observe the dark matter! Even though the scientists spend lots of time to bring with so many hypothesis, it will be useless. There is no way to observe, to prove.
So there the philosophers might can help. Maybe a new definition from another perspective would come out. Sounds like a little bit weird, but it is just like the example I given above. Ancient Greek philosopher considered the apple would drop off to gravity is because apple love to keep close with ground. If there is no answer, the only true answer is the right answer, because people need a answer. So philosopher would give definition, as a temporary solution in the field of science.
The right is not same to correct, but after thousand years Newton appeared and he solved the problem. So there I predict, scientist will bring with a definition and wait for a nice chance to solve the question: What is the dark matter?
Science and Essence
We already mentioned that science is the law of nature from observation, it is also the rational inference. Basically, Science do not care any essence problem. So if science do not care any essence problem, who will? Does philosopher can answer what is the original form of world? If yes, the answer would just like the Greek philosopher thoughts of dropped apple. So only Scientist would think about the essence, if they need to know an object, the best way to know is from the composition: atoms. Scientist would research essence for science.
Developing of Science, include lots of quest of essence. But Science is not a subject of essence, law of nature. And the law of nature is from observation and inference. Could it really have the quality to know the essence? Essence is not like any law, essence is essence. Use a method of observing and inferring might be the best choice of humanity. But it also means that you could only touch the essence and never hold it entirely.
Work Cited
Dedao App
Rome and Greece Politics
peter
Introduction
When we talk about the origin of the Western Culture, we would mention the Greece and Rome. They both have their own characteristics. Greece developed a city-state system and there were lots of states in the Greece area. Greece also gave brith the first democracy country, Athens. Rome dominated the Mediterranean sea before 145 B.C. They both have their special polity so that they became great power.
The origin of Greece polis institution
Before we think about the origin of the Greece polis, we should take a glance of the geography. This is the map of Greece:
Greece area has it own special environment. There are lots of island in Aegean sea. Greeks lived on those island and the seashore of Balkan peninsula. It would be hard to build a concentrated cultivation and form a large communal living community, but this provided a perfect commercial environment. Greece polis would exchange good with other polis, especially places where were lack of a specific kind of good that elsewhere are producing.
Greeks were particularly advocated the polis form and they quite paid attention to politics. Once there was a famous poet said: political society is the essence of good life. Aristotle said: Man, as a Greek word, are political zoon. A men who is by nature without a polis is either more or less than a man. That prove the polis is the most appropriate for man in Aristotle’s thoughts. They think only people live in polis were civilized.
Most of polis have a consul(except Sparta), they were constituted by election. Polis were small state with small quantity of population. Athens, the one of polis, reformed to democracy and became prosper.
Athens democracy
Athens was originally the name of a city on the Attica Peninsula. After attica was unified as a city-state, it became the name of the country. Athens faced three seas, had little terrain, plain and hilly land, which was not convenient for the development of farming and animal husbandry, and had good shipping conditions.
In 594 BC, Solon was elected as the consul of the Athenian polis, and began a series of economic, political and social reforms with constitutional significance：
All debts owed by Athenian citizens as security against the person shall be abolished
A series of pro-business policy measures, including restricting food exports and expanding olive oil exports; Currency reform to facilitate trade and commerce; To reward the immigrants of craftsmen and encourage citizens to learn handicraft skills.
Abolishing the monopoly of the hereditary aristocracy, and no longer classifying citizens by birth but by the quantity of their property
A council of four hundred persons was established as a permanent body of the General Assembly of citizens and as the highest administrative organ.
After the reform, Athens enjoyed the prosperity and got developed. Athens rose to dominate the Greek region. After that, they allied to others states and defeated the strong Persian army.
Rome’s special polity
Before Rome started war and dominated the Sea, Rome was a small state at Apennines peninsula. At 5 century B.C. Rome started war with its neighbor and finally dominated the Italy, Iberia, North Africa, France, Greece and part of Britain. Historian had proved that those result are depending Rome’s polity, to a great extent.
Ancient Rome have three politic stage, Monarchy, Republic and Empire. Stage Republic and Stage Empire are worthy to study. Rome Republic, is kind of a mixed government. There is not any absolute power rule. Different apartment balance different apartment and the country take advantage from those different parties.
Noticeable, the Modern American polity is quite similar to Ancient Rome polity. Furthermore, American polity is inspired by Rome polity because it is so good. Rome have a name SPQR, that is Senatus Populusque Romanus(Senate Population Romans).
The Roman Political system was basically divided into three main elements such as the Senate, the Magistrates and the Assemblies. The senate was politically important because it is the center point for political discussion. The Senate mainly managed the advisory powers. Secondly, the administrative and executive powers lie with the magistrates. In addition, they are also responsible for serving as judges and initiating legislation. Thirdly, in the assemblies; people passed bills, elect the magistrates and served various judicial functions.
This kind of structure have some several advantages. First, Consuls could make decision efficient and effectively; Second, Senate have many Elite and Noble, their collaboration could help making decision more suitable; Third, Consuls elected by people, those people are the representative of the country, so bring with their thoughts into the process of making policy, it would be more suitable and accessible.
Republic of Rome to Roman Empire
Depends on the Roman strong army and enlightened politics, the republic of Rome gradually captured the whole Mediterranean Sea. But there comes to another problem: How to manage those people?
When Rome was just a state, they could control the power and make the country easily. They built a special but strong polity to maintain domestic stability. When they started the war, they encouraged soldiers, when they conquer an area, those land and people belong to them. It brought treasure and population to Rome and guaranteed the loyalty of troops.
So they dominated the whole Mediterranean Sea, they took a glimpse. North, are savage German’s land; South, is the Sahara Desert; East, is Arabic Desert and it was too difficult to control the Mesopotamia because it was too far from the Roman dominions, those land are useless and infertile; West, is the endless Atlantic and Britain area. Rome is not possible to explore Africa and America at that time. And England island was infertile too because Britain was full of bogs in that period.
After the Fourth Macedonian War, Rome gradually stopped the conquest. The Republic of Rome experienced a economic developing period. But social contradiction were intensified.
First, the prosperity if Republic of Rome was depending on military force, there were lots of soldiers in Republic of Rome(they are civilian, not slave). When for expanding constantly, a large number of new slave constantly nourished the Roman land wealth, wealth while in concentration, but also can take out of the interests of the small scale to meet the needs of the civilians, so the contradiction can be in developing cover, if the soldiers complain about the unfair distribution in this war, then another war again robbing a batch of goods to appease everybody.
Now solider could not get benefit because of end of wars. For the soilders, it is not like modern society. They joined troops because glory and trophies but the governance will not pay for them. There were displease because soldier is a useless job and the treasure into the pockets of the nobility. Besides, most of those who went to war as soldiers were economically crippled by a chronic lack of labor in their families, and the influx of slaves made them jobless proles. They took off their uniforms and went home, but they still had a hard time.
Second, land annexation and the gap between the rich and the poor are becoming more and more serious. A small number of slave owners controlled most of the land and wealth. Family farms disappeared in the countryside and villages declined, replaced by estates of big slave owners. The fundamental of Republic is depending on small peasant economy. Relatively independent farms, there is no monopoly and that is the core of republic. But the increasing power of noble and slave owner made the governance more inclined to those people. Obviously, republic is no longer fit to this situation. That is a deep reason that Roman Republic changed to Roman Empire.
Land annexation made lots of civilian lost their jobs. Those unpleasant solider, because they went out for long time, their family cannot manage those land because of lack of labour. The noble and nobility occupied those land, some people even got into serious debt. Many people who join the army are not as good as before or even extremely poor. At the same time, the gap between the rich and the poor make it more and more serious and make people have worse life.
Third, large numbers of civilian lost their land and their jobs and became proletarians. They are useless and only have a vote. Displaced freemen had to go to the cities to beg for food in addition to serving as soldiers. After all, they still had votes and the state provided them with food and entertainment. Those people were doing nothing all day, go to the Colosseum to paralyze himself and watch some boring fights. Many Romans fall and became entirely useless. Under Caesar (around 40BC), at least 300,000 people were on state handouts in Rome.
Fourth, slave cannot bear the exploitation from their lord. So they started the revolution. From the 230’s to the 130’s, the era of the civil war, the Sicilian slave revolt, the struggle between the bankrupt peasants and the big landowners started. Most historians believe that extreme oppression and a yawning gap between rich and poor led to the uprising.
The decline of the soldiers, the serious land annexation wealth gap, the bankruptcy and degradation of the civilian and the slave revolt finally cause the changes of Rome. In 27 BC, Octavian used his political skills to announce that he would remove all power and restore the Republic. At the same time, he pretended to be the chief senator at the request of the Senate and the citizens, accepting absolute power totally contrary to the Republican system. Since that, era of Republic of Rome ended, era of Roman Empire started.
Roman Empire
There comes to Roman’s empire age. The Prince system was implemented in the early period of the Empire, and the Domina system was implemented in the later period. Principatus is generally called the system of heads of state. It still retains the General Assembly and the Senate of the Republic, but the functions of these national institutions have been greatly weakened. The imperial heads have a military, administrative and religious power in one and can continue to be re-elected to become The emperor in substance. It can be said that the Prince system is a transitional stage from the republic to the monarch. It implements the monarchy in the name of the republic. The Prince system greatly strengthened the centralization of power and consolidated the personal power of the monarch, so that the head of state could effectively control the Roman Empire that was determined at the beginning of the civil war and had a wide territory. Facts have proved that such a political system is effective. It has ensured the peace of the Roman Empire for more than two hundred years, created conditions for the early social development of the empire, and gradually romanized the provinces in the empire.
Work Cited
Politics – During the Enlightenment /Billy
Ethics – Descartes/ Billy
Serene-David Hume’s Aesthetics
Reality / Johnson
As for me, reality means everything that surround us; we live in the reality every day but we don’t actually have the idea of its existence.
Philosophy had given many great thoughts on reality, but I consider the Empiricism works for me the most.
Empiricism, in philosophy, the view that all concepts originate in experience, that all concepts are about or applicable to things that can be experienced, or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience.
People live in the world experiencing everything, eventually they form their own wills; so the reality is really existed.
However, it is said that one theory can never be true unless it can be proved false. To better understand the senses and experiences, I want to look at this empiricism concept on the other side, which shifts the perspectives to the question: before we can experience anything, we have to determine whether the world physically exists. It had been discussed for centuries because it’s relevant to all the branches; it’s the essence of all the following theories and schools because none of those will exist without the world’s existence.
I surmise that the reality is existed thus derived the so-called the world view.
I believe that the world view contains something more than scientific information. It is a crucial regulative principle of all the vital relationships between man and social groups in their historical development. With its roots in the whole system of the individual and society’s spiritual needs and interests, deter mined by human practice, by all man’s accumulated experience, the world-view in its turn exerts a tremendous influence on the life of society and the individual.
The world-view is not only the content, but also the mode of thinking about reality, and also the principles of life itself. An important component of the world-view is the ideals, the cherished, and decisive aims of life. The character of a person’s notion of the world, his world-view, facilitates the posing of certain goals which, when generalized, form a broad plan of life, ideals, notions of wellbeing, good and evil, beauty, and progress, which give the world-view tremendous power to inspire action.
The reality is real; although some believed that the world we live in every day is somewhat a mental belief, which was comprised of thoughts from all directions and the underlying regulations by all wise-men. It appears that the world was actually come up by us, the very creature that lives inside of this “imaginary world”. Whenever it comes to existence, relativity definitely can’t be avoided because it demonstrates how people view the existence; whether it’s from a human point of view or a universe point of view.
Scientific information takes a relatively huge big part in the “world view”.
In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all physics and proposed new concepts of space and time. It’s quite confusing when linking philosophy to science; most of the scientific theories were hypothesized by someone first, and the proving experiments took place that will decide its authenticity; at the end of the experiment people will be able to know whether it’s true or false. As the result, I assume the reality really exists firstly, so the world view is working truly as well, which turns out that all the thoughts and behaviors occur within human society are authentic and this can go backward proving the world is real.
With the premises of world’s real existence along with “we came up with the world” theory, can we manage to say and do everything we want?
In terms of the freed mind and action, the free will would be a qualifiable word to indicate the contents. As for Christians, God dignifies us with free will, the power to make decisions of our own rather than having God or fate predetermine what we do. Consider what the Bible teaches. God created humans in his image. Unlike animals, which act mainly on instinct, we resemble our Creator in our capacity to display such qualities as love and justice. Nonetheless, one is still governed and controlled by lots of outer factors such as moral laws, government laws, relationship laws, implicit workplace rules, etc. Why can’t we manage our words and behaviors under most circumstances? I believe that we’re bestowed with free-will, but as we grow up and interact with other individuals who also possess free-will, then our free-will will be compromised, which somehow violates the definition of free-will. Consequently, people are going to have to live by rules. In conclusion, I personally don’t hold the opinion of humans possessing free-will; what we were born with will eventually be descended into human-rights or other manifestations.
The reality is real and why it’s call “real-ity”; people live in this reality with limitations, which affects our natural-born free-will. But our pursuit of freedom and free right have never stopped. This is reasonable because we came up with the world at last.
Resources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/empiricism
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s02.html
Ethics / Johnson
Ethics can be described in various ways, some will say ethics are equal to moral laws; some say ethics are sequences of judgments about what’s good and what’s bad, and there are also people who believe that ethics were merely some seemingly true standards created by the strong to control people’s mind by deceiving languages.
As for me, I think ethics are some sort of systematic mindset that is used to determine whether we should do something. To have a more comprehensive perspective of ethics, I am going to analyze this from multiple angles.
Firstly, where did the moral laws come from?
I want to begin with Kant’s moral philosophy. From the earliest recorded history, people’s moral beliefs and practices were grounded in religion. Scriptures, such as the bible and the Quran, laid out moral rules that believers thought to be handed down from God: Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery, and so on. The fact that these rules supposedly came from a divine source of wisdom gave them their authority. They were not simply somebody’s arbitrary opinion, they were God’s opinion, and as such, they offered humankind an objectively valid code of conduct. This theory had resulted in people obeying these moral laws with no doubts and they were said to be rewarded with their obedience. On the other hand, if they violated the so-called “commandments” then the punishments will occur as follows.
Subsequently, these godly doctrines were seriously challenged as the commencement of the scientific revolution. The reason why they were challenged is that all of them were given by God, which can be reversed if the figure of god collapses. The tricky thing about this whole system is that what if God is proven to be wrong or what if the followers realize that the god’s omniscience is actually biased, which had bothered the moral philosophers back then and drew the discussion of the authenticity of god. Scottish moral philosopher, Alisdair MacIntrye, addressed this as “the Enlightenment problem”——If religion wasn’t the foundation that gave moral beliefs their validity, what other foundation could there be? If there is no God—and therefore no guarantee of cosmic justice ensuring that the good guys will be rewarded and the bad guys will be punished—why should anyone bother trying to be good?
If godly moral laws were not convincing enough, where would the moral law come from?
Consequently, the non-solidified concepts of god had brought up the considerations of what’s good and what’s bad; who’s gonna determine; and do the ideas of “good” and “bad” really exist or they just in relatively speaking.
From my perspective, I think human are gifted with the thoughts of good and bad.
“What is good and what is evil?”; Philosophers of all ages have thought over this question. Each reckoned that he had solved the question once and for all, yet within a few years, the problem would re-emerge with new dimensions. In fact, most of the answers would be later found inadequate or unsatisfactory.
Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, believed that good and evil are two notes in a symphony. He found that many things change into their opposites, which led him to believe that the combination of opposites resulted in a harmonious whole.
Soctrates, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, believed that knowledge of good and evil and its criteria are imbued in man and he can differentiate between the two if he desires so. With sustained thought and guidance of nature, he is in a position to know what is good and what is evil. Soctrates’s famous saying——“O man! Know thyself” had also indicated that basic principles of good and evil are innate in man.
Taken together of all these thoughts on good and evil, I found that most of the philosophers insisted that man are endowed with the knowledge of good and evil before coming to this world. Only they need the right orientation and inspiration. However, If this premise is hypothetically valid, then why would we need laws and rules of all kinds to constrain and regulate people’s behaviors? Didn’t the government just need to trigger their underlying abilities of judgment? Since all humans are meant to capable of determining good and bad.
Obviously, this is not the case for any generation, not even the generations of philosophers. If there’s life at stake, people will certainly obey the official laws.
There had been lots of great materials regarding the law and its relationship with humanities. Philosophy of law, also called jurisprudence branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of law, especially in its relation to human values, attitudes, practices, and political communities. Philosophy of law often aims to distinguish law from other systems of norms, such as ethics or other social conventions. Views about the nature of law often depend upon, and occasionally have contributed to, answers to some of the most fundamental philosophical questions—for example, regarding the foundations of morality, justice, and rights; the nature of human action and intention; the relations between social practices and values; the nature of knowledge and truth; and the justification of political rule.
From all the discussions of law and ethics, the seemingly fair can be applied—–Based on society’s ethics, laws are created and enforced by governments to mediate in our relationships with each other. Laws are made by governments in order to protect its citizens and they have to be approved and written by these three branches of government before they are implemented and enforced by the police and the military, with the help of the legal system consisting of lawyers and other government servants. Nevertheless, While laws carry with them a punishment for violations, ethics does not. In ethics, everything depends on the person’s conscience and self-worth. So people should remain their obediences to the government law when there’s conflict.
Learning philosophy helps us to better understand the occurrences in real life; I will give the example of George Floyd to illustrate the relationships between ethics and laws. George Floyd, who died on May 25 after being pinned to the ground by an officer who pressed a knee into his neck. From an ethics perspective, this was an extremely racist, unjust, and outrageous decision that the white police killed an unarmed African American citizen. George Floyd was begging the officer not to kill him, which turned out was ignored by the officer who also pointed his gun to the others who were trying to help. Ethically, what the police did back there should have been punished in the consideration of human; however, the government decided to expire his jurisdiction as the
response, which had definitely upset the crowd and directly engendered the riots and protests that came after. Legally, the officer was on his duty arresting Floyd and he has the power to control the suspects using tools; what he did that day was a little excessive but technically still inside his jurisdiction. This example showed exactly how people think about morality and laws. Most of the time the ethics corresponded to the intentions of executing those punishments; they both hope people do what’s right, which people don’t follow very often so the lawful punishments were mostly anti-ethics.
Just like a famous saying “the only thing that doesn’t change is changing.”; sometimes the punishments were added with personal or evil intentions, at which time people will rise up and against evil. But citizens will all obey the laws at the end of the day so when it comes to the counterpart among ethics and laws, the laws will always be considered priorly.
In a nutshell, believe it or not, humans are gifted with the ability to judge good and evil and it’s our choices to do what we believe is right or what we’re told is right. None of the laws of belief can be challenged because they’re all made by man, a species with vastly varied thoughts and behaviors. So we have to explore infinitely to try to find out what type of person we want to become and how authentic our moralities and the laws are.
In my personal suggestion, try to be good as much as possible.
Resources:
https://www.thoughtco.com/kantian-ethics-moral-philosophy-immanuel- kant-4045398
http://www.al-mawrid.org/index.php/articles/view/good-and-evil-1-views- of-the-philosophers