...Courtney McDonald Humanities 201 Aquinas, Rochefoucauld, Rousseau, Hume and Kant are all sitting in Starbucks, sipping coffee for their weekly brunch dates when Courtney comes in looking quite distressed and upset. She walks up to the table of the five men. Aquinas: Hello my dear friend Courtney gives Aquinas a hug. Courtney: It’s so nice to see you again Aquinas. (Looks at the other four men) Hello everyone, I’m Courtney; I am a friend of Aquinas. Sorry for interrupting your meal, but I have a serious matter to discuss with Aquinas in hopes that he can help me. Aquinas: That is why I invited you here. When you called and said you had a dilemma I thought it would be a good idea to have you come here and get the advice and opinions of these great philosophers. As long as your okay with opening up to them about your problem? Courtney: I don’t mind at all, especially because I could use all the advice I can get right now and have very little time to make a decision. Courtney grabs a chair and brings it back to the table to sit in. Aquinas: Whatever the dilemma, there is always a right and wrong thing that can be done. So let us figure it out and start by you letting us know what this troublesome dilemma is. Courtney: Well it all began on Tuesday morning at my work. I work for a company as a secretary and have for two years. After divorcing my husband two years ago for having an affair, I decided to get a job to support my two children. Luckily, my...
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...Nikki Thompson Final Paper The Proof that God Exists The greatest question that man has ever asked is “Why”, as philosophers it is the only question that one asks. Since the birth of man kind, the question has been asked “where do we come from”; and since the birth of man kind the answer was simple, someone put us here, a person of higher being, a person often referred to as God. As a philosopher and thinker one can not simply believe in the existence of God, but ask the question why; why does God exist. There are many philosophers who dare to answer the “Why” including Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Aquinas. In answering this question there has developed three main arguments that focus on the proof for the existence of God; the Teleological, Cosmological, and Ontological arguments. The most difficult of the three arguments to understand is the Ontological argument, for it is purely logical proof; it attempts to argue from the idea of God to His necessary existence. Simply put the ontological argument attempts to prove the existence of God by stating God exists because he must. “While from the fact that I cannot conceive God without existence, it follows that existence is inseparable from Him, and hence that He really exists. For it is not within my power to think of God without existence.”(Descartes 135) Simply put, in the entire world there is a greatest, a number one, in every aspect of competition there is someone in which never loses. God must exist because...
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...redicto- ad- absurdum. The argument is backed up by the five ways put forward by the 12th century theologian and philosopher, St Thomas Aquinas. In the 12th century, St Thomas Aquinas put forward 5 ways to prove the existence of God in his book “Summa Theologica”. Aquinas’s five ways to prove the existence of God are based on the work of Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, whose work was later translated in Arabic, by Muslim philosophers Al- Kindi and Al- Ghazali, and then translated into Latin. I will be examining three of Aquinas’ ways, uncaused cause, unmoved mover and necessary being. As well as examining these three ways to prove the existence of God, I will be looking at their supporters and critics. Aquinas’ 1st way to prove the existence of God was the uncaused cause also known as the first cause. Aquinas considers the world in terms of “cause and effect” which means that without a cause there is no effect. Everything in the universe has a cause. Human beings have a cause (their parents) too. Aquinas argued that we could follow the chain of “cause and effect” all the way back, but there cannot be an infinite chain. There must be an uncaused cause, which causes everything to happen without itself being caused. This uncaused cause is God. God does not require a cause by nature so and can therefore be understood as the “uncaused cause”. Aquinas’ 2nd way identified that everything that moves is moved by something else. Everything has a mover; nothing has the power to move...
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... secondly the conscience is the power to distinguish good from evil believed by St. Jerome and thirdly, the conscience is the voice of God, believed by St. Augustine. Thomas Aquinas thought that the conscience is a device for distinguishing our right actions from our wrong ones, he believed that we all obey the synderesis rule which means that we all have a innate awareness of good and bad that cannot be mistaken, this is why he reckoned that people do generally tend towards the good and away from evil. However Aristotle had not realized that mistakes can be made when working out what is good and what is evil, as it would be unlikely for every single human being to agree on what is right and wrong. Our conscience does not command our action of choosing right or wrong, but is ‘reason making the right decision’. In relation to the moral Argument, Immanuel Kant said that we all have a sense of moral law. If we feel we ought to do something, this can prove that we have free will, which allows us and our conscience to make the correct decisions when deciding upon the rightness or wrongness of a situation/outcome. But to be free allows for some mistakes, Aquinas agrees that the conscience is infallible, that it is not the voice of god, but it is part of our God given make up. Joseph Butler agreed with Aquinas about our conscience being innate, and that God gave it to us, but his views are more intuitive than Aquinas’s. Joseph Butler thought that our conscience helps us focus on others...
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...He had made a huge influence during the enlightenment era. It was him who led the transcendence from rationalism and empiricism. His theory of justice was also momentous. In contrast to Descartes’ individualistic view of justice, Kant posited a notion of justice that is grounded by the rule of law. We can’t just tap others and necessitate them to be virtuous, because virtue is a free act of the will. But even if that is the case, we can still urge them to follow the rules of the law, and that those who would violate would be...
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...A Claim Against the Drinking Age in the United States of America The substance of alcohol has long been a topic of intense debate, particularly in the United States of America. In its relatively short history, the United States has had a prohibition which completely banned all alcohol distribution and consumption, as well as a drinking age which has changed over the years. Ultimately, it seems that legislative bodies in the U.S. cannot make up their minds. A big part of that indecision may stem from the fact that most amendments have been largely ineffective in culling what has been a very real, very large problem in the United States: alcohol related deaths or sicknesses. Nearly one out of every ten deaths in working class adults dies from alcohol-related incidents (10% of all deaths), making alcohol the fourth largest cause of preventable deaths in the United States. As a result of this, promoting responsible alcohol consumption and continued responsible actions once its effects take place are paramount in responding to those significant statistics. The method that seems to have been most focused on in curtailing dangerous alcohol consumption has been legally regulating who is allowed to consume it (as mentioned above: prohibition, and drinking ages). In short, alcohol consumption has been made illegal, and consequently deemed unjust, for people below certain ages. Many people have raised ethical, practical, scientific, and legal arguments surrounding...
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...i) Examine the ontological argument as an a priori proof for the existence of God. (18) Ontology is the branch of philosophy that explores the whole concept of existence. Sometimes scientist have to assume that something exists in reality in the physical world even if they have never come across an example of it, because a combination of factors indicate that there must be X, even if we have not found it yet, in order to explain other things. The ontological argument for the existence of God is an a priori argument, working from first principles and a definition in an attempt to demonstrate the existence of God. It is also a deductive argument, using logic rather than depending on the evidence of sense experience. In this way, then the ontological argument is different from other attempts to argue for the existence of God. The ontological argument argues that almost everything, which exists, does so in a contingent way; it depends upon other factors. We as individuals are contingent beings; everything else apart from God exists contingently. God, however, it is argued by religious believers, is necessary rather than contingent, there was no time when God didn’t exist. There is nothing that could happen which would cause God to cease to exist. The ontological argument begins with assumptions about God, without any empirical evidence such as the characteristics of God: Omnipotent, omniscient and omnipotent. This is what makes the argument an a priori argument, as most of the...
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...Theology Revision Plato Plato lived in Athens in the 5th and 4th Centuries BC He was the student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle He was a dualist- believed in the body and the soul He believed the soul was more perfect than the body He believed that societies should be run by philosophers He believed the physical world is a pale imitation of the world of the forms The allegory of the cave The prisoners- normal people of society The prisoner who escapes- philosophers, people that thirst to know the real truth The people casting the shadows- the leaders of society- shaping the world without knowing the truth The shadows/statues- what people believe is reality, what they are told to believe, things people deem to be important The cave- a world without knowledge, the physical world/the body The fire- controlled, dim light- limited knowledge. An imitation of the form of the good The journey outside- a difficult journey, acquisition of knowledge The sun- illuminates the true world- form of the good The journey back into the cave- the desire to educate and inform others of the truth The world of the Forms Forms Plato uses the word ‘form’ to describe the true essence of material objects in the world This idea of the ‘form’ exists in a non physical (yet more real) realm that can only be understood by the mind. This is called the world of the forms Plato believed that the forms were interrelated and hierarchical The highest form The ultimate principle...
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...b) To what extent was Hume successful in his critique of the cosmological argument? [10]Hume makes some very important challenges to the Cosmological argument which some believe count decisively against it. One of the key areas he calls into question is the argument’s dependence upon what Leibniz termed the principle of sufficient reason. In this principle an adequate explanation must be a total explanation. The universe requires an explanation of itself as a whole. But many would say, as Russell later told Copleston: “Then I can only say that you’re looking for something which can’t be got, and which one ought not to expect to get.” If you have explained each individual element of a series any explanation of the series as a whole would seem to be superfluous, and besides he says that ‘the whole’ doesn’t really exist anyway – it is ‘an arbitrary act of mind’ that makes things into wholes. What we term the ‘whole universe’ in modern physics may be only a bubble in a larger reality that we have no way of grasping. Also if we are only entitled to talk about causes when we have had experience of them, then this argument would seem to be over-stretching itself in speculating upon what it cannot know. On the other hand, there is of course a problem with stopping at a certain point and saying that we should seek no further explanation, in that it is a basic presupposition of all scientific work. However, even though a principle of rationality is that we can find an explanation for...
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...AS Philosophy & Ethics Course Handbook 2013 to 2014 [pic] OCR AS Level Religious Studies (H172) http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/type/gce/hss/rs/index.aspx OCR AS Level Religious Studies (H172) You are studying Philosophy of Religion and Religious Ethics and will be awarded an OCR AS Level in Religious Studies. The modules and their weightings are: |AS: |Unit Code |Unit Title |% of AS |(% of A Level) | | |G571 |AS Philosophy of Religion |50% |(25%) | | |G572 |AS Religious Ethics |50% |(25%) | If you decide to study for the full A Level you will have to study the following modules at A2: |A2: |Unit Code |Unit Title |(% of A Level) | | |G581 |A2 Philosophy of Religion |(25%) | | |G582 |A2 Religious Ethics |(25%) | Grading | ...
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...The ethical theories of Augustine and Aquinas start with a basic assumption of a divinely revealed truth about human nature and the world. By the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, this starting point could no longer be taken for granted. Europe was still Christian without a doubt, but the age of secularization had set in. In medieval times God determined the law. For kant, “laws” are human constructions arrived at by reasoned public debate, and since reason is the only faculty we have that is “infallible” ( or so Kant hoped), the laws would always be right and just and therefore worth of our obedience. Now that God couldn’t serve as our guide, at least for nonreligious people, Kant believed we needed to identify the fundamental principles of the human mind, on which we could base morality. He therefore proposes a philosophical system that distinguishes between different human faculties in order to identify the sole faculty, which can reliably serve a moral purpose. For him this is reason, and it must a separate category from all other faculties of the mind or heart, even positive ones like we saw in The Good Samaritan and Jumping Mouse such as love and empathy, or in Helen Keller such as passion, hope or good character. These and everything else about human nature was completely untrustworthy, anything to do with feelings or sensual desire was always ruled by self-interest and therefore unworthy of becoming a basis for morality. Reason alone is reliable...
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...Theories http://www.rsrevision.com/Alevel/ethics/absoluterelativemorality/index.htm Introduction Some ethical theories are teleological - what is right or wrong depends on the end or outcome of an action - for utlitarians, pleasure, happiness or 'the greatest good'; for Aristotle, 'Eudaimonia'. Other theories are deontological - doing what is right means doing your duty or following the rules - for Kant, the categorical imperative; in Natural Law, the secondary precepts. It is easy to think of teleological theories as relativist and deontological theories as absolutist, but it it not that simple. Apart from Kantian Ethics (thoroughly absolutist and deontological) and Situation Ethics (clearly relativist and teleological), ethics seems to involve an uneasy mix. Absolutist ethical theories Kant and the Categorical Imperative Kant says that we should act according to maxims that we would want to see as universal laws. These laws are absolutist - we can work them out logically prior to experience; they are not verified through experience (they are known 'a priori'). The consequences of our actions are irrelevant to whether they are right or wrong - evil actions may have unintended good consequences, and someone might act heroically without any guarantee that the consequences will be good. No character quality is absolutely good (good without exception) - for example, it is possible to act kindly but do the wrong thing. The only good thing is a good will that does what is...
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...Larry D. McClain March 07, 2014 Introduction There are two distinct aspects of the doctrine of God – one being His nature that consists of things outside of Himself. During this paper, the focus will be on the God’s personality. It will solidify the importance of knowing His personal, Trinitarian subsistence and the impact it could have on your life and relationship with Him. The purpose of this paper is to identify one of the distinctive aspects of the doctrine of God – that being His personal, Trinitarian subsistence and how it could establish one’s relationship with Him. There is a need for this study because most attention is focused on God’s nature, those things outside of Himself. It is first a necessity to know God and have a relationship with Him before one can understand those things outside of Him. This subject warrants a study because some Christians don’t know what they don’t know. Historically, God is implied as to only presenting Himself to some, but in actuality His presence is availed to all. This argument will be expressed in three parts. Those parts being our knowledge of God, the nature of God, and (one) God in Trinity. Let’s first discuss our knowledge of God. Our Knowledge of God The bulk of our knowledge of God is based on our relationship with Him. Most people do not have a personal relationship with God; therefore, their knowledge of Him is very vague. The other two that are most common is His existence and immortality which establishes...
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...The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - http://www.iep.utm.edu Philosophy of Sexuality Among the many topics explored by the philosophy of sexuality are procreation, contraception, celibacy, marriage, adultery, casual sex, flirting, prostitution, homosexuality, masturbation, seduction, rape, sexual harassment, sadomasochism, pornography, bestiality, and pedophilia. What do all these things have in common? All are related in various ways to the vast domain of human sexuality. That is, they are related, on the one hand, to the human desires and activities that involve the search for and attainment of sexual pleasure or satisfaction and, on the other hand, to the human desires and activities that involve the creation of new human beings. For it is a natural feature of human beings that certain sorts of behaviors and certain bodily organs are and can be employed either for pleasure or for reproduction, or for both. The philosophy of sexuality explores these topics both conceptually and normatively. Conceptual analysis is carried out in the philosophy of sexuality in order to clarify the fundamental notions of sexual desire and sexual activity. Conceptual analysis is also carried out in attempting to arrive at satisfactory definitions of adultery, prostitution, rape, pornography, and so forth. Conceptual analysis (for example: what are the distinctive features of a desire that make it sexual desire instead of something else? In what ways does seduction differ from nonviolent rape...
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...approach to making decisions in ethics which relies on duties or rules to determine how you should act. Thus it is very different from consequential theories of ethics like Utilitarianism where results matter more than obligations (oughts). One of the most notable examples of a deontological theory of ethics is Kantian Ethics. Kant rejected using results as a good way to guide actions. A notable feature is that, unlike Utilitarianism, he thought empirical evidence was an unreliable guide and that how we experience things came from the mind (a priori). ‘It is impossible to conceive of anything in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except good will’. A notable point is that, Kant took an absolute approach to morality and dismissed the idea of choices or consequences to solve a moral dilemma. A significant feature is that, Kant thought that the idea of moral oughts must come from within which he called ‘reason’. Since Kant believed reason is shared by all humans and is inherent in the universe, then logically we should come to the same conclusions about how to live using their reason. Additionally, with our reason, Kant identified that there were ‘prima facia’ duties- duties that are supreme to others. Another key characteristic is that, Kant’s deontology states that we experience a sense of duty/ obligation to others. This he called the categorical imperative; ‘you ought to behave in the categorical imperative because it is the moral law’...
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