Author Archives: Jasmine Scott

Is Rage Really Self-Destructive?

Posted on April 20, 2015 | 3 comments

“This is one of the dangers to health by which human beings are faced on their path to cultural development. Holding back aggressiveness is in general unhealthy and leads to illness (to mortification). A person in a fit of rage will often demonstrate how the transition from aggressiveness that has been prevented to self-destructiveness is brought about by diverting the aggressiveness against himself: he tears his hair or beats his face with his fists, though he would evidently have preferred to apply this treatment to someone else. Some portion of self-destructiveness remains within, whatever the circumstances; till at last it succeeds in killing the individual, not, perhaps, until his libido has been used up or fixated in a disadvantageous way.” (Ch. 2, Freud)

In “An Outline of Psycho-Analysis,” Freud talks about how we have two basic instincts: Eros and the destructive instinct (or the death instinct). In the quote that I have above, he talks about the effects of the destructive instinct if it is repressed in every day life. I agree somewhat but not wholly wholly on the conclusion that Freud said about what would happen to people if the destructive instinct was repressed. I do not believe that having rage inside can necessarily lead you to be destructive in such a way that you ” tear [your] hair or beat [your] face with [your] fist.” I believe that people deal with rage in many different ways, ways that can be either constructive or destructive to their psyche. For example, a man has rage toward his mother because while he was growing up, she did nothing to encourage him educationally and give him support in the things that he wanted to do (like sports or school plays). She was always absent and neglectful because she was an alcoholic. Now, the man can deal with his rage in two ways. He can repress it, and decide that he will make something of himself without the support of his mom, and use his rage to drive him to do his best and prove to his mom that he is somebody that should be recognized, or he could take his rage and decide to stop attending school because he figures, what’s the point if his own mother doesn’t even care about him? So he’ll be a high school or middle school drop out, and to cope with his rage he starts to become an alcoholic just like his mother, and his life goes in a downward spiral from then on.

Even though, in the first instance, the man is using his rage and is working hard in life for the wrong reason (in order to prove something to his mother rather than just for personal satisfaction or because he has a desire to make something of his life for himself), he is still using that rage in a constructive way. Of course, maybe later in life he will need some counseling to deal with that rage, but he still got far in life by using his rage in a constructive way. I just think that Freud needs to acknowledge that destructive instinct is not always something that, if repressed, can lead to self-destructedness. What do you guys think?

 

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Posted in Enlightenment-Era Philosophy, Perception

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Independent Study and Technical Schools

Posted on April 13, 2015 | 4 comments

Hey guys! So we’ve read a lot on education and about how philosophers like Friere, Foucault, and Gatto strongly dislike the educational system that we have today.However, none of these philosophers, except for Friere (kind of), gave any solution to the problems in education. I think that I might have a partial solution to the problems in education; actually, I didn’t really think of this, but the high school I went to did. I’m thinking that every high school can implement these solutions. The first is allowing a student to do independent study-which I will explain a bit more later- and allowing them to attend a technical school while they are in high school.

So independent study was a really cool program at my school for juniors and seniors. If students were on track with their credits, they could decide to study and research and do projects on things that they found interesting and wanted to learn about. For example, if the only thing that really interested you in high school was molecular biology or learning about the civil war, my high school would partner you with a person who was a professional on that information, and you would work with that person and do research projects for the remaining two years of high school (as well as doing your normal school work).This program is a solution, I feel, because it allows students to be trained in something that actually pertains to the goals that they want to achieve in their life and that can actually be useful to them in the real world. This is one of the big issues that the philosophers had with our educational system, and I think that this program provides a partial solution because students at least have some kind of authority over what they are going to be taught and do in life.

The other program that my high school did was allow juniors and seniors go to a technical school for half of a school day, and then spend the rest of the school day taking their regular classes. So, if the student wanted to become a nurse, or a mechanic, or a cosmetologist, or a photographer, they could get more than basic knowledge and experience in the field of their choice before going into the real world. Also, the technical school is great because it gives students the chance to decide if the program that they’re in is really something that they would like to do for the rest of their lives as a career.

Both of these programs, I believe, give students some power when it comes to their education and what, specifically, they are being taught while in a public/private school system. I believe that if we implement these programs in every school, then education would be a better system overall, and people would be more excited to go to school and obtain a degree. What do you guys think?

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Posted in Contemporary Philosophy, Education, Experience, Knowledge

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Flaws in Education

Posted on March 30, 2015 | 1 comment

“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” (Freire, Pedagogy)

I am in complete agreement with this statement. In Pedagogy, Freire talks about the flaws in our system of education. He says that humans/students are “containers” and “receptacles” to be filled by the teacher. In other words, he is saying that we are just memorizing whatever the teacher is teaching us, and the better that teachers help us memorize certain material, the better the teacher is. Humans really develop intellectually if they are not just memorizing material, but actually experiencing and researching what the material really is and why it is important. This helps the student retain information and enables him/her to take full advantage of their cognitive ability. I cannot tell you how many times I have been taught something by a teacher and studied and been tested on certain material, and not even a month later, I couldn’t remember anything important about what I had learned. However, the things that I have done research and experiments on myself and then been taught about afterwards are the things that I remember even today. For example, I remember almost everything that I learned from a sheep brain experiment/analysis that I did in FOCUS in second grade. This was  because the teacher let us make our own observations about the brain and then clarified what we were thinking by giving us technical lingo instead of just telling us everything about the brain without giving us a chance to explore it.

Freire’s thoughts on how education/teaching should be presented to students can be compared to Rousseau’s thoughts that he expressed in Emile. He, too, believes that people should be taught through experience rather than just being told and forced to remember . Freire also reminds me of Dewey when he says that “the teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable.” Dewey says that in education, we should learn things that will be useful in the future, and that we should also incorporate past subject matter in these teachings. He also says that subject matter should relate to real world experiences, and that subject matter in general should be based on experience rather than theory.

It is really interesting to see how these philosophers all have the same kind of thinking towards education and how people should be taught. What do you guys think?

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Posted in Contemporary Philosophy, Education, Experience, Knowledge

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Rousseau on Politeness

Posted on March 23, 2015 | 3 comments

There is a quote by Fred Astaire that has to do with parenting and that also ties into the Emile readings that we’ve had. He said, “The hardest jobs kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.” Now, I personally agree with this statement. Having good manners means that you treat others as well as yourself with respect. There are many things in the world today that are constantly in childrens’ lives that affect their manners. It could be a television show that they saw their parents watching, or it could be one of their friends that always gets their way, or it could be a video game that has disrespectful characters. Children learn from these things/people that are constantly in their life.

In Emile, Rousseau distinguishes the rich from the poor, saying that, “The artificial education of the rich never fails to make them politely imperious, by teaching them the words to use so that no one will dare to resist them.” (Pg. 68) Rousseau is rejecting politeness, which is a central part of having manners. He believes that havng a different social status from one person can make you polite but also “fake”, so it is not something that people should teach their children about. He believes that children should be taught on how to “preserve” their life, and that adults should not try to keep preserving them. (pg. 42). Basically, what he believes is that children should be taught how to do things for themselves, and that adults should have a hands-off method in teaching them, letting them explore and do what they want until they reach a consequence.

Now, I don’t agree with Rousseau and his rejection of teaching politeness because I personally think that learning how to be polite, or to be respectful, especially in certain situations, can help people a lot in life. However, he is correct to an extent. Teaching your children how to be polite is not always the most important thing, because politeness can be faked. I do believe that teaching your children how to preserve their life and do things for themselves takes precedence over teaching them how to be polite, but I don’t think that Rousseau should completely write politeness out of the books. What do you guys think? Should we even be polite anymore?

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Posted in Education, Knowledge, Perception

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Women and Their Attractions

Posted on March 2, 2015 | 3 comments

In an article written about what women like about men, there are surprising qualities that they deem attractive. One of the qualities that stood out to me was the fact that, according to the author, studies have been shown that women like men who “act tough”. The reason? “Most women want bad-boy qualities so they don’t have to act perfect all the time.” I think that the person who thought this had a little flaw in their thinking, or they didn’t know how to articulate what they really wanted to say effectively. I believe that what this person really wanted to say was that women want bad-boy qualities so they don’t have to act tough or seem put together all the time. In other words, they want to identify themselves as the weaker sex, and they want their men to feel protective over them. If you read this article, there is another section about how women are attracted to hair because it means that “there is a caveman lurking inside” of the guy. This made me wonder, why do women like to identify as the weaker sex, and why are they attracted with the idea of their man acting like a possessive, protective caveman?

Women know that the average man is stronger than the average woman; they are taught and demonstrated that fact from a very young age. And, some scientists believe that women like their men to be strong and possessive because of the sentiments from the hunter-gatherer days. Does this explain why women like to portray themselves as the weaker sex? Not to me. I believe that women like their men acting like “cavemen” and like to identify as the weaker sex because they want to have some sort of “proof” that their significant other cares for them, and they believe that the “caveman response” proves that. Why do females associate this behavior to mean that males have an emotional attachment to them? Is it logical for women to assume that males that act like that care for them? What if the males are obsessive and just want to have control over their female? Would it also be logical for a woman to be more attracted to a man who acts like a caveman instead of a man who acts like a real gentleman? It seems like this article believes that the caveman personality wins. What do you guys think?

link: http://yahoo.match.com/cp.aspx?cpp=/cppp/yahoo/article.html&articleid=6181&TrackingID=526103&BannerID=749836

 

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Posted in Experience, Identity

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Hegel and Sense-certainty

Posted on February 23, 2015 | 2 comments

I didn’t really understand what Hegel meant by sense-certainty until I read about what he meant when he said “Here” in the later paragraphs of our reading. In paragraph 101, he says,

“But in this relationship sense-certainty experiences the same dialectic acting upon itself as in the previous one. I, this ‘1’, see the tree and assert that ‘Here’ is a tree; but another ‘I’ sees the house and maintains that ‘Here’ is not a tree but a house instead. Both truths have the same authentication, viz. the immediacy ofseeing, and the certainty and assurance that both have about their knowing; but the one truth vanishes in the other.”

By this, I think that he means that how we sense, or perceive things to be in that moment is how things are, and if we are certain that what we are seeing is really what we are seeing, then that is how we are “certain” and we can say that that is a truth. With this example, he demonstrates that our sense-certianty can change.  This is what he means when he says “the one truth vanishes in the other”. When you are currently seeing a tree, you can say, with certainty, that what you are seeing then is a tree. However, if you see a house right after you see the tree, you cannot say that you are still, currently, seeing the tree; you are now seeing a different object. This is what he means when he says, right in the beginning of paragraph 99, that

“The knowledge or knowing which is at the start or is immediately our object cannot be anything else but immediate knowledge itself, acknowledge of the immediate or of what simply is. Our approach to the object must also be immediate or receptive; we must alter nothing in the object as it presents itself. ”

He is saying that you immediately can see one object and tell yourself what it is. However, if the object alters, then we must alter our knowledge on what the object is. This is what I think he means when he says that we must be “immediate and receptive”. So, our senses have to change, they have to adjust to our surroundings. What to you guys think?

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Posted in Ancient Philosophy, Identity, Knowledge

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Why Only Physical?

Posted on February 9, 2015 | 3 comments

In Book 2 of “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” by John Locke, Locke talks about how “the variation of great parcels of matter alters not the identity”, and then he goes on to give the example of the oak tree, and how “an oak growing from a plant to a tree… is still the same oak”, and that a “colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse”. (Ch. 27, 3) This I completely agree with and understand. However, it appears to me that Locke is being a bit narrow in his argument. Locke is only focusing on the physical aspect identity instead of looking at the spiritual or emotional aspects identity, which I believe, when concerning humans, are the things that play the biggest part in altering one’s identity.

If I applied Locke’s argument about how physical variation does not alter identity to humans, he would be completely correct. Humans go from being an infant to an adult to a person of old age. Throughout this entire physical process, it is true that this person is the same. Their identity is not altered. If they were to take fingerprints when they were eight years old and then when they were eighty-eight years old, the prints would match because they are still the same person. However, from the age of eight to eighty-eight, the person has gone through a lot of spiritual and emotional changes. What they used to do and how they acted and what they believed in as a child changed when they became an adult, and may have even changed some more when they became elderly. And this change is what truly alters a person and causes them to not have the same identity as they did when they were of younger age.

This is the only problem that I have with Locke’s argument. I wish that when he talked about physical traits not altering identity that he would have compared it to spiritual and emotional aspects and how they do alter a person’s identity

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Posted in Ancient Philosophy, Experience, Identity

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Being Good Is a Choice

Posted on January 26, 2015 | 3 comments

In Meno, Socrates gives several examples of fathers who worked their hardest to try and teach their sons how to be good. However, the teachings do not work. (Meno, 94a-e) Then, Socrates says that teaching cannot be taught. Well, I disagree. As children are growing up, they pick up habits from their parents and family, who are the principal people that teach them. Whatever children are being taught to do is what they will do unless they choose not to. You see, in my opinion, being good boils down to a choice- whether or not you will follow the habits and teachings of the people closest to you or not.

There are four types of outcomes that people can choose based on the habits of their parents: good habits from parents = good habits from children, bad habits from parents = bad habits from children, good habits from parents = bad habits from children, and finally, bad habits from parents = good habits from children. Parents can teach their children habits that are either good or bad, and children can learn from those habits and decide which habits they want to continue doing for the rest of their life. In society today, there are two different types of stories that are frequently heard. The first is the story about the parents that give their children a fabulous upbringing and are nurturing and caring, and their child(ren) end up making a mess of their life by practicing bad habits. The second is the story about a child who had a rough start in life (like the deadbeat parent, the “always drunk” parent, the abusive parent, or the uncaring/unsupportive parent) and made it a goal to become successful and, by practicing good habits, achieved that goal.

Everything about a person’s character, which determines if they are good or not, depends on the choices that he or she makes. It is not a matter of you not being receptive to good things that causes you to be a bad person, but a matter of if you decide to be receptive to the things that you were taught, whether they be good or bad.

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Posted in Ancient Philosophy, Experience, Identity

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Is “Meno’s Paradox” Really a Paradox?

Posted on January 21, 2015 | 2 comments

I do not believe that “Meno’s Paradox” is truly a paradox. When he says that you cannot find out about something that you know about because you already know it, he is completely wrong. One reason why this is wrong is because we are human beings, and we will never know everything about one thing. Many times, the subjects that we want to know about are too broad. For example, we can want to know everything about math, or everything about a person, but that can never happen because the information is simply too much for our brains to handle. Another reason why we will never know everything is because knowledge is relative. One person can think that knowing everything about Obama does not include knowing how many pieces of hair he has on his head, while another person thinks that knowing everything about Obama does include knowing that. Finally, we will never know everything about a specific subject or topic because knowledge is not static; it is dynamic. What is thought to be true and knowledgeable now can change in the future. New discoveries on different subjects are made everyday, some of which are proven true or false. Let’s say a person really did know everything about math. If they are on their deathbed, and five seconds before they die a new mathematical discovery is approved as being true and knowledgeable, then that person died not knowing everything about math. Another example is if you want to focus only on knowing what Bill eats for lunch every Wednesday. If Bill has eaten a chicken salad sandwich every Wednesday for the past ten years, then you will think that you know what Bill eats for lunch every Wednesday. But what if Bill decides that he wants to try the tuna salad sandwich one Wednesday and decides that since he likes it so much, he will eat that sandwich from then on instead of the chicken sandwich? Then your knowledge of what Bill likes to eat for lunch every Wednesday will have to change.

Meno also believes that you can’t find out about something that you do not know about because you do not even know what it is you are trying to find out about, and he is wrong in this case as well. For one thing, this statement is bogus, because if you are trying to find out about something, then you already know what you want to find out about. Also, you can find out about something that you previously knew nothing about. What people have to do is look at how they obtained information about something that they knew nothing about in the past. You could have asked someone who you thought was knowledgeable on the subject, or you could have gone to the library and gotten a book on what you want to know about. You would do the same when you are trying to learn about new things- either ask a person or read a book or look for answers on the internet. Of course, there are always questions that people ask that not a single person has any knowledge on. This is when I refer to my saying that knowledge is dynamic. You could do research- whether it is looking at different books on topics that relate to that subject or getting opinions from people that know some things on that subject- and come up with an answer on your own. This is what people did in the past, and it is what people will continue to do in the future. Of course, people that come behind you will test your discovery that supposedly adds new knowledge, and it will either become approved or rejected by the masses.

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Posted in Ancient Philosophy, Knowledge

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