From the Paper
"The most sought after power in the history of man is immortality. Stories have flowed through generations concerning its power and whereabouts. Legends about Floridian Fountains have motivated some in search of it. Movies about the life giving chalice of Jesus have even been made. On the surface it appears as if immortality is the ultimate spoil of life. But if put in a position to receive this power, would most mortals accept, or refuse? Karel Capek wrote a play illustrating what could happen if immortality became reality among mere mortals. Bernard Williams believes that death gives a meaning to our lives that is stripped with the onset of immortality. He suggests that immortality is the worst thing anyone could have happen to them. Yet, Williams overlooks a number of factors and makes some odd assumptions in his argument. Immortality is not necessarily a misfortune."

Tags:capek, heaven, karel, life, religion, resurrection

Abstract
In his work "The Very Idea of Man", Floyd Matson argues that three distinct views of human nature are present in contemporary society. The paper shows that to best illustrate these views Matson presented three models, the "robot model", the "creature model" and the "creator model" to show man as either a "machine", "beast" and/or a "free agent". The paper discusses Matson's argument that since all three views coexist in society, they therefore must be compatible. The paper argues however that while this may be true in one sense, all three views are in another sense mutually incompatible.

From the Paper
"An example of this predetermined programming in one extreme would be the assembly line worker from the industrial revolution to today's industrialized societies. The monotony and regulation of his life could probably have affected his own view of humanity. He would then see himself as more of a programmed mechanism than a sentiment being capable of and able to make choices."

Tags:social, Darwinism, beast, of, prey

Abstract
This paper describes Aristotle's arguments against the ability of the Platonic theory of forms to adequately explain our knowledge of things.
The author explains that, in his arguments against Plato's theory of forms, Aristotle asserts that Plato's conception of the forms as the cause of our knowledge of all things is incomplete in its ability to explain the causes of the material world and our knowledge of it. If all knowledge was caused by the forms themselves, it follows that it would be impossible to acquire knowledge, for it would already be known.

From the Paper
"Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, argues against the ability of the Platonic theory of Forms to adequately explain our knowledge of things, through its inability to describe the causal nature of the sensible world and prohibition of an ability to acquire knowledge. Aristotle prefaces his argument by refuting the view that the Forms are able to explain the being of things, essentially noting that they have no relation to the causes evident in the sensible world. Immobile Forms cannot explain motion; Forms without substance cannot be the substance of the material. Having established their inadequate relationship to the being of things, Aristotle then addresses the manner in which the Forms cannot either cause our knowledge of things. This end is achieved through four arguments, where if the Forms stand as the cause of our knowledge of all things, we would already have an a priori knowledge of all things and their material composition, which could not have been forgotten and was accessible to our sensory perception.
"Aristotle's first argument against the Forms as a cause of the knowledge of things is that it is impossible to have a prior knowledge of things, though this is exactly what the Forms would be. As Aquinas explains in his commentary, "...if the Ideas [Forms] are the cause of our knowledge, men must have a knowledge of all things, because the Ideas are the intelligible structures of all knowable things". If such were the case, man would already possess the very knowledge he sought to acquire; and it is apparent that men do acquire knowledge, as Aristotle demonstrates in his tracing of the history of philosophy as a development of the knowledge of causes. Knowledge may be said to generate from things already known, from particular to universal or vice-versa, but the knowledge itself is not already known. If knowledge of all things was based upon the Forms, man would already know everything and as such would never acquire knowledge."

Tags:cause, theory, relationship

Abstract
This paper discusses the Cartesian mind-body dilemma by analyzing Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy". The paper explains that Cartesian dualism intended to moderate between the established religious paradigm of the time and the emerging natural sciences and by positing mind and body as complete substances which refer to nothing but themselves. The paper also looks at how Descartes' theory of mind preserves the religious conception of man as an immortal soul in possession of free will by placing such outside the realm of the physical sciences. The paper points out that Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy" seeks to establish two distinct classes of substances in mind and extension, but fails to adequately address the manner in which these two incommensurable substances interact to generate our experience of the world. The writer suggests that Descartes conceives of the body as a 'kingdom within a kingdom' of mind, and is left with the problem of how these kingdoms are able to carry out diplomatic relations with one another.

From the Paper
"The cogito, 'I think therefore I am', delimits mind as the substance of thought, the primary existential of being. This is arrived at by proposing that there could be a malicious demon of some sort that may be propagating a vast illusion of experience, generating even our thoughts. Even in this radical scepticism, however, Descartes concludes that there must be something that this hoax is played upon, and no matter what this demon may be able to do, he can never convince something that it is nothing; "...I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind" . The cogito, therefore, shows mind to be a substance that is necessarily true without reference to any other substance. It is the essence to which all the modes of thought refer."

Tags:metaphysics, cogito, thoughts, demon, soul, science

Abstract
This paper attempts to answer the unanswered question of all time, the existence of God. It attempts to explain the different ?proofs? and theories presented by both sides, the theists and the atheists. It examines theories such as the Cosmological argument that there is a concept of a beginning, the starting point of all events (contingent beings) and Vacuum Genesis, a theory based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for mass and time. It also looks at the creeds of philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm of Canterbury.

From the Paper
"St. Thomas Aquinas addressed this predicament in his "Five Ways" to God, in his published works entitled Summa Theologica. Aquinas's first proof for God concerns motion; everything around us is in a process of motion. That which moves is moved by another, and that by another, and so forth. Following this path in regression, we must come to the first cause of motion, which in itself is not moving - thus the unmoved mover. Aquinas's second way to God is analogous to the first, except it concerns efficient cause; nothing in nature is the cause of itself, for that would mean it preceded itself, which is impossible, so an effect must always have a cause, regressing backward in time; we must end at the first cause, the cause for everything - God."

Tags:theism, atheism, teleology

Abstract
This paper deals with the development of Heraclitian thought. It shows how Heraclitus was concerned with the essence of the earth's substance and existence. The writer explains how he divided his philosophy into three basic subcategories: fire, water and earth, which he believed to be the basic elements of earth. He is also credited with the theories of 'Unity in Opposites,' 'The Law of Non-Contradiction,' and 'The Cosmos in Constant Change.'

From the Paper
"Heraclitus (c. BCE 540) was born in Ephesus, on the Ionian Coast, near present-day Turkey. Deemed as the "puzzeling, obscure philosopher" (Article 1), he is known only by the 125 fragments that have survived from his book, "On Nature," through selected references by later authors. Essentially, Heraclitus' theory is divided into three parts: the Logos, the War and the Pyr (Fire). His search for an underlying element circumvented the earlier Milesians quest for a foundational, essential "arche." He claimed to be the first to grasp the LOGOS of the cosmos. According to various English translations of the Greek, LOGOS can mean a wide range of things, the most common of which is "word," and the lesser common including "reason," "argument," and "definition." It appears that Heraclitus believed the "latent structure is master of the visible structure." However, even such a claim is ambiguous enough to warrant further discussion. If language is the latent structure, and everything else is the visible, is language the master of all else? Or if the latent structure is language, and the visible structure is the cosmos, is language all that there is? And how did Heraclitus relate the need for language to existence itself? It is highly possible that the Heraclitusian LOGOS (as a linguistic, quintessential building block for existence) was the pre-cursor to Parmenites? philosophy of thought, language and existence, in that Parmenities asserted claims such as "nothingness can exist because it is spoke of and therefore much be something," (lecture notes, Anastasia Anderson, September 2002). However Heraclitus went so far as to state that the LOGOS is everything and "common to all things" (Fragment 2, Sextus, adv.math VII, 133), a claim which is not echoed later by Parmenities, who saw more limitations in language than Heraclitus did in the LOGOS."

Tags:logos, fire, water, earth, cosmos

From the Paper
"Throughout history, one of the most pondered questions is "what is the meaning of life?" Some religions use the notion of an afterlife as a means to obtaining some higher meaning of life. Whether or not this afterlife exists has also been a topic of debate and ponderance for centuries. Some have believed that religion is the opiate of the masses, "created" solely to keep hope that the post-mortem experience is more fulfilling than earthly existence. It is generally regarded that in order to survive death one must remain them self, in other words, they must retain their identity. But what dictates your identity? Is it your soul? Is it your psychology? Could it be the continued existence of your body? All three of these accounts of identity are popular and offer different explanations for the continuation of self after death. "

Tags:death, heaven, identity, immortality, life, personal

Abstract
This paper compares and contrasts the idea of God posited by Benedict Spinoza with that posited by Gottfried Leibniz. The paper points out that, according to Spinoza, God exists necessarily from its divine nature, inhabiting the world as the world inhabits it. It claims that Leibniz saw the elegance of this utterly rational God, though he also espied a threat that he attempted to displace by defending the traditional anthropomorphic idea of God. Spinoza's God is beyond human, to which the human notions of 'good' and 'evil' do not apply. Leibniz saw in this God no freedom, no agency, and no morality by which man could live. The paper concludes that these two philosophers, arguably the most significant of their day, differed drastically in their views of God's role with regard to the world. While Spinoza's view of a non-human God appeals to humanity to find a liberal and democratic method by which to exist in the world, Leibniz's more traditional view of God involves the reliance upon faith and provides a perfect example upon which humanity must model itself.

From the Paper
"While this eminently rational idea of God possesses an almost geometric elegance, the implications of such a view would greatly disturb Spinoza's contemporaries, Leibniz among them. Since all things follow necessarily from God's nature as substance, determined solely through itself, it follows that things could not be any other way than they are. "Things could not have been produced by God in any manner or in any order different from that which exists." This is an utter rejection of the supreme anthropomorphic father figure, who chooses between right and wrong and lays down laws by which humanity is judged. Good and bad are reduced to human notions relative to our limited experience of the world, completely irrelevant to a universe that functions from the necessary. Morality is seemingly abolished, and God seems too powerless to ever have created anything at all. In fact, freedom to Spinoza is the ability to be determined by nothing other than one's nature, which entails that only God is completely free as the one substance, and to choose to be anything but what he is would be absurd, as what he is, is perfection. "...God alone is a free cause. For God alone exists only from the necessity of his nature and acts from the necessity of his nature." The threat to the theocratic order is explicit here, for while Spinoza's God is necessarily perfect, he is not necessarily good. Following from necessity, what we term 'evil' is as much in God as what we call 'good'. This God is not based on relative human notions or longings: it follows purely from the necessity of reason. Spinoza maintains that he sees God as surely as he can see the truth of a geometric proof: "I know it in the same way that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles." The rejection of ultimate reward and punishment places the onus for morality squarely upon human shoulders; a yoke religion explicitly labors to remove because it is too heavy for most humans to bear and would lead to social chaos. Perhaps Spinoza had such in mind when he penned the last line of his Ethics: "...all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare."

Tags:morality, ethics, philosophy, existence, faith, logic, metaphysics, rational

Abstract
A look at the life and work of Aristotle. The author analyzes Aristotle's major philosophies about the human species and metaphysics and describes the major contributions Aristotle's philosophical ideas made for Greek philosophy.

From the Paper
"For Aristotle, the Form of the Good is so mysterious, and can be known by so few people that it is not much good to anyone. Aristotle advocated the alternative path, beginning with what is most immediately known about the thing in question and forming clearer and clearer ideas about it. Aristotle's Metaphysics is a study of what he calls "substance" and what he says are "the principles and causes" of substance which is itself the principle and cause of the substance of each particular thing. In Aristotle's Book VII of his Metaphysics he maintains that the substance of a thing is determined by discovering "the last differentia," of a species."

Tags:theory, human, existence

Abstract
An intricate discussion of philosopher George Berkeley's concept of immaterialism and his subsequent argument for the necessary existence of a Supreme Being, or God. The author outlines and analyzes Berkeley's two major philosophical treatises, and the main arguments found in each are clearly defined and presented in a succinct, yet detailed manner. Philosophical ideas/concepts discussed include the "Likeness Principle" and the variability of sensory experience. The paper then presents Berkeley's argument for the existence of God, which builds upon the already established theory of immaterialism by discussing the distinction between absolute and relative existence.

From the Paper
"Immaterialism, as defined by Berkeley, is the idea that it is impossible for any sensible qualities whatsoever to exist independent of a mind (Berkeley 1965, 5-6). This argument is brought forth succinctly and clearly in the Dialogues, in which Berkeley presents his case through the character of Philonous, and defends it against criticism by the character of Hylas. Although there are many aspects in both Principles and the Dialogues that contribute to the overall argument for immaterialism, for the purpose of this essay, only two of the strongest points will be discussed- the argument from variability and the likeness principle.

One of the key features of Berkeley's argument for immaterialism centers on the variability of one's sensory experiences in comparison to another's. He notes that each individual perceives the world differently, whether in terms of smell, taste, sight, or touch. One of the ways in which this variability of sensory experiences is presented by Philonous to Hylas is during a discussion between the two concerning taste. Philonous points out that although a certain food may taste pleasant to one person, that same food may taste awful to another. "How could this be?, Philonous asks Hylas, "if taste was something really inherent in the food?" (Berkeley 1998, [180]) There is only apparent taste, and this requires dependence on a mind. The same argument is also applied to smell, touch, sight, extension, motion, and solidity, and is reasoned to be just as effective. Perceptual variability occurs with these senses/qualities as well, and none of the apparent smells or colors seem to be any more real than any other ([68-78])."

Tags:berkeley, dialogues, existence, experience, god, higher, immaterialism, likeness, metaphysics, philosophy, power, principle, religion, sensory, supreme