The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism
In answer to the question 'What can we know?' anyone who gives a pessimistic answer is labelled a sceptic. Scepticism is associated with incredulity. A sceptic is someone who questions things (particularly received opinions) and also practices suspension of judgement. This questioning outlook has been labelled by some as practical scepticism. However, philosophical scepticism involves more than this. Its essential element is a general view about human knowledge. In the broadest terms, philosophical scepticism holds, or at least finds irrefutable, the view that knowledge is impossible.
There are two features of philosophical scepticism which differentiate it from everyday 'sceptical' outlooks. The first has to do with its strength. The more challenging sceptical arguments do not depend on imposing high standards for knowledge or justification. Rather, the scepticism they imply is radical. It is not just the case that we can have all kinds of good reasons for what we believe, though those reasons do not quite measure up to the standards required by genuine knowledge. The radical sceptic questions whether we ever have the slightest reason for believing one thing rather than another, so we can never even get to the point of justified belief, never mind whether our justifications are sufficient for knowledge, in some more restricted sense.
The second crucial feature of philosophical scepticism concerns its scope. The philosophical sceptic's negative verdict on human knowledge is highly general. This generality explains why philosophical scepticism formulates its challenge in terms of the possibility of knowledge. it is not merely the case that we in fact know a good deal less t...
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At every level of basketball there are players that have shined on and off the court, this is true for two exceptional players like Michael Jordan and LeBron James. The debate over these two marvelous athletes and who is the better of the two, has divided sports fans since LeBron earned his first Finals Championship.
“80 percent of teen-agers have tried alcohol, and that alcohol was a contributing factor in the top three causes of death among teens: accidents, homicide and suicide” (Underage, CNN.com pg 3). Students may use drinking as a form of socializing, but is it really as good as it seems? The tradition of drinking has developed into a kind of “culture” fixed in every level of the college student environment. Customs handed down through generations of college drinkers reinforce students' expectation that alcohol is a necessary ingredient for social success. These perceptions of drinking are the going to ruin the lives of the students because it will lead to the development alcoholism. College students who drink a lot, while in a college environment, will damage themselves mentally, physically, and socially later in life, because alcohol adversely affects the brain, the liver, and the drinkers behavior.
Few professional basketball athletes’ names are recognizable to the avid, diehard basketball fans and the uninterested layman alike. One of the first, if not the first, athlete to pop up in anyone’s head is the legendary Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan, also known as His Airness, MJ, and Air Jordan, is widely considered the greatest basketball players of all time. Throughout his professional career, Jordan kept changing the game and redefined the entire sport of basketball. However, in 2002, an aspiring athlete by the name of LeBron Raymone James, also known as King James or simply LeBron, immediately rose to prominence and caught the attention of the entire NBA community. The young star quickly proved his tremendous skill, receiving the hype of being the next Michael Jordan. Looking closer, I found that the similarities between the two players are striking.
We've all heard it before: "Too much of anything is bad for us." The amount of binge drinking occurring on American college campuses today proves that college students do not heed this warning. Binge drinking, or drinking for the purpose of getting drunk, harms both drinkers and non-drinkers alike. As today's college students come dangerously close to being swept away in the sea of papers, exams, jobs, and interviews, they use bingeing as the lifeboat that allows them to escape the stress. It allows them to forget their worries, fit in with the crowd, and live on the edge in a fast-paced world that normally does not leave time for such activities. Teetering on the brink of adulthood, yet still trapped in childhood makes drinking decisions difficult for many college students. A desire to get away from our usual lives because of societal regulations and conformity, psychological and emotional problems, and the stress of everyday life causes college binge drinking.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; G. E. M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (eds. and trans.). Philosophical Investigations. 4th edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
One of the main reasons students feel the need to binge drink is peer pressure. They do this because their peers are doing it and they want to fit in better. College dorm rooms offer many different places for students to drink. Dorm rooms give a great place for a few people to get together, and before you know it “everybody’s doing it”.
One might initially assume that all people in this age bracket are prone to participate in binge drinking. However, while forty-four percent of college students binge drink, only thirty-four percent of students the same age who are not enrolled in a college or university binge drink. There may be several reason...
According to a national survey conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “almost 60 percent of college students ages 18–22 drank alcohol in the past month, 1 and almost 2 out of 3 of them engaged in binge drinking during that same timeframe” (NIH). Binge drinking culture refers to the recent rise and normalization of college age students drinking excessively. The CDC describes binge drinking as “a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol level to 0.08grams within two hours” (CDC). For many young adults, college is one of the first times they will experience complete freedom. This freedom often leads to partying, which goes hand in hand with the consumption of alcohol. However, since the age at which
Moore, Brooke Noel., and Kenneth Bruder. "Chapter 6- The Rise of Metaphysics and Epistemology; Chapter 9- The Pragmatic and Analytic Traditions; Chapter 7- The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries." Philosophy: the Power of Ideas. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Print.
Over 49% of the college students within America do not consume alcohol on a regular basis (Lankford, 2007). However, a significant percentage of these students lack the control to abuse alcohol when they start consuming it. The annual Health College Alcohol Study indicates that the social interaction within a majority of the societal settings has significantly been affected by the increased amount of alcoholic consumption. This has seen the rise of fights and disorderly communities, especially within those areas where colleges are set up. ...
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were a time of hysteria, stress, and destruction. These dreadful trials took place in Massachusetts (“A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials”). During these trials, more than two hundred people were accused of being witches; 24 of them were executed (“A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials”). All of these innocent people were falsely accused. However, it is not possible to fully blame the girls who initiated it, because they most likely had Ergot of Rye which occurs as a plant disease, affects the girls, and caused this incident.
Ed. Michael Goldman. Teaching Philosophy 36.2 (2013): 181-82. Print. The.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts on July 4, 1804 to Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning. Hawthorne’s father was a sea captain and died of yellow fever in 1808 when Nathaniel was only four years old. After the death of his father, his mother, two sisters, and he moved in with his mother’s relatives, the Manning’s, and lived there for ten years. Hawthorne discovered journals that his father had written as a sailor over the years, showing an immediate interest which inspired him to become a writer. In 1821, Hawthorne started college at Bowdoin College with the financial support of his uncle, Robert Manning. He was elected Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, graduated in 1825, and published his first work, a novel called “Fanshawe” in 1828. Shortly after graduating, Hawthorne added the “w” to his last name in order to hide his relation to one of his ancestors, John Hathorne, one of the only judges involved in the Salem witch trials and never repented of his actions.
Augustine and Al-Ghazali, two medieval philosophers that have not interacted throughout their lives, both hold arguments on their thought of skepticism. Narrowing down the focus of skepticism to the doubt of self-existence and the certainty of knowledge/mind. This paper will analyze both of their views on why skepticism is important in doubting the absolution of vision, their arguments for and against skepticism, and lastly the focus on skeptical thinking and the purpose it’s meant to achieve. In doing so will present the views of both thinkers in how they views of skepticism is compatible in some aspects and does contrasts, nevertheless both dialogues hold merit in their thinking of why we ought to be skeptical in our senses of vision and in the knowledge/mind.
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