René Descartes


René Descartes was born 1596 in France and he died 1950 in Stockholm, Sweden.

He was a philosopher and is maybe most famous for (Cogito, ergo sum) I think therefore I am.

Already as a kid his critical thinking made him doubt learning by reading books.

We should be thinking critically and don’t believe everything we hear.

He said that if you think you exist. I believe that he is right, we have to think for ourselves.

This must have made some people think about what they actually are doing.

For example, why go to church if you don’t believe in god. Why should I pray to and praise someone that maybe doesn’t even exist.

I believe it was harder to think independently under this age because maybe you were used to be told what to do.

Maybe people were dependent of others to know what to do?

But when generation after generation grew up whit this idea, I believe that it’s easier to think independently for us.

Nowadays most people are able to thing for themselves.

At the same time we are better at making people believe that they need a certain product.

Read more about René Descartes at: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

//Christopher


A feeble body weakens the mind. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

 

This is completely my opinion because everyone knows that if you don’t exercise your body will crash down. The problem is that I don’t think that society and the state pushes people and most young people to exercise and practise. Every single football club around us having problems with the economy and that’s makes it difficult for the clubs to have people who wants to deal with us young players. To motivate people you need good coaches and to have good coaches they also have to wants to come and take time three to four times a week. If we would have some more money it would be more fun to come up to the pitches and maybe dress on the same clothes which we borrow from the club and when we come back the next day they are washed again. Sport is something that put thousands of people in exercise but we still have to work like h**l to keep our “business” going. Have you ever heard of any kind of cultural related collections that went out for selling tickets or inventory food stores for example? Not in our city anyway, they have all the money they need from municipality. I’m kind of a sport nerd so I see the problem from only one side and have probably in some points very wrong, but when everyone says that health is one of the most important thing with our body have I one solution that most people don’t care about. Make people more engaged in sports of any kind because if you make young people think it is fun to exercise when you are little you will keep doing it when you grow up.

by: Jakob Lundén


”Själen är den oförstörbara världens spegel” – Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.

Does every human being have a soul? Back in time, the people that lived then did not believe that every human had a soul, which made the humans none equal to each other. Today it is different; today every human is equal, either they are black or white, Christians or Muslim. I believe that every human being have a soul. What does the soul do? Does the soul reflect our feeling, thoughts and our acting? Or does the soul just reflect some of it? I believe that the soul reflects our feelings, thoughts and our acting. Not only what we think and how we act. The soul reflects much deeper. Our souls reflect every little thought behind every little action. Our souls do also reflect our view of our selves, where we would like to be and how we would like to be as a person. Maybe the world and all living organism have a soul as well, just like us humans.

Is the world really unbreakable? If we can have a broken heart without showing it cannot the world and the souls be broken without us seeing it as well? We do not always need to see things that exist; we cannot see feelings and all the souls and not even the whole world itself. But we still believe in those things, believe that those things exist. I think that the world can be broken. We are just too blind to see it. We are to blind too se a lot of things, there is a lot of things that we are missing.

So, is the soul the mirror to the world? Back in time, people maybe thought that the nobility where the mirror to the world, that the nobility way of behave where a good way and that they reflect how the world where; good, big, and noble. We can also think in another direction from today, this we can relate to what I have written further up on this page. If we gather together every single soul in this world, do we then have a big soul that is the soul of the world? And then, are this big soul the mirror to the feelings and thoughts of the world? We will never have an answer to this. I believe that this can be the true, that the souls of ours actually are the mirror to the world.

Maybe it is just me that thinks that this universe is bigger than it actually is. That it is me having to big thoughts about the world and our lives. We may not even have a soul and the world may not even be a world, this could be nothing but it can also be everything.

To find more information about Leibniz, please go to:
http://www.ne.se/lang/gottfried-wilhelm-von-leibniz

I would love that you guys wrote some of your thoughts about this. Feel free to discuss about the soul and the world. Thank you for reading my text.

/ Linnéa.


John Locke and the Basis of Empiricism:


Empiricism held an essential philosophical position during the Enlightenment. It began and developed in England. Its foundations were created in the end of the seventeenth century by John Locke.

Even though Locke’s philosophy was given the same name as Francis Bacon’s philosophy, they are and always have been two different currents.

According to John Locke there are no inborn ideas. This means we need to learn everything in our life. Humans coming to this world are like ‘tabula rasa’ – the blank slate. We know nothing and our knowledge comes only from what we’ve experienced and learned. However, we may only gain the material of knowledge; the power of our mind is innate. This allows us not only to learn and believe, but also analyze  gathered information. ‘Sensations’ are processes, which happened in the external world and ‘reflections’ are our thoughts and conclusions.

As stated by Locke, everything  in our mind: our own observations, external experiences, abstract conceptions and fantasies; every other thing is considered to be an individual ‘idea’. There might be either simple ideas (not created by us, only acquired  by experience) and complex ideas (combinations of simple ideas).

Taking into consideration Locke’s theories:  when we see a squirrel, it becomes some sort of idea to our mind, a signal picked up from environment. We are not in the possession of any proof, that this squirrel actually exists, but internal reflections are supposed to convince us, that we are not wrong and the squirrel is real.

John Locke was an extremely logical man. He might not have been a genius, but thank to his sober and moderated way of thinking many views in science were strengthened. Nevertheless, are his opinions true? Are we really born with no knowledge about world surrounding us? What about the ethical principles? If we are born without them, do we actually know the difference between good and evil? An we trust our senses, when they deliver information to our mind?

This is just my way of looking at this subject. How about you? What are your opinions about John Locke and empiricism?

Get more info about John Locke at:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/

By:Kamila


Prejudices are what fools use for reason

I have chosen to reflect on a quote that the famous philosopher and writer Voltaire (1694-1778) once said.

The quote: “Fördomar är de okunnigas argument” or “Prejudices are what fools use for reason”.

I really agree with Voltaire on this one! If you look at the world today prejudices really are what fools use for reason.

It is really easy to have preconceptions and judge but I think that this is really based on lack of knowledge or jealousy. Think about it! When you do not know, you guess instead according to your own personal experience, therefore prejudices are a big part of the modern society.

Just think of all the things/people that you might miss out on!

For example, if you see someone on the street, let’s say that it is a blond woman with big breasts and short skirt, what would you do? I think that all of us would judge that person in some way, because we all do it, we judge people and other people probably judge us as well. So, I think that we can all agree on that this is wrong, we do not want people to judge us so why do we judge them? I mean ever since we were very small we have heard from our parents/teachers that “You should treat people the way you want to be treated yourself. ”Why don’t we learn from this? One of the explanations is simply the personality of every individual person some of us have more prejudices than others. Another explanation is that our brain constantly is trying to categorize the things we see, hear, smell etc.

What can we do to prevent this? I think that every person has to look to themselves and think “am I a person who use a lot of prejudices?” but this might be hard for some of us because sometimes it might be easier to find faults I others instead of ourselves.

 

Voltaire used this argument to fight prejudices at his time and today we might as well use it against SD (Sverigedemokraterna). I think that the quote “Prejudices are what fools use for reason” really fits in here and in their political view. What do you think?

//Hedvig


Philosophy, Pascal’s Wager


“Either Christianity is true or it's false. If you bet that it's true, and you believe in God and submit to Him, then if it IS true, you've gained God, heaven, and everything else. If it's false, you've lost nothing, but you've had a good life marked by peace and the illusion that ultimately, everything makes sense. If you bet that Christianity is not true, and it's false, you've lost nothing. But if you bet that it's false, and it turns out to be true, you've lost everything and you get to spend eternity in hell.” -

 

These are the words of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) who was a French mathematician, a physicist, an inventor, a writer and a Catholic philosopher during the Scientific Revolution. These words are known as Pascal’s Wager. They are not an evidence for the existence of God, but they are his defence and argument for believing in God.

 

As a radical contrast to those “proofs” of the existence of God made by earlier philosophers, Pascal’s Wager is not an evidence for the existence of God. Pascal considered that there was no idea in trying to prove God’s existence and instead, he decided to concentrate on finding reasons for believing in God. As a matter of fact, I agree with him, because how can we know if God exists? Right now there is only one way to find out if he exists, to end your life, and then find it out. Although, I can assure, you will not be likely to tell anyone else about it.

 

Although Pascal was the first who came up with the first theory of this kind, he was not the first who had been thinking in this direction. Plato, Arnobius, Lactantius and the Islamic theologian Al-Ghazali are some other important philosophers who were at the same line of reasoning.

 

Many philosophers think Pascal’s Wager is the weakest of all arguments for believing in the existence of God. I, on the other hand, think that it is a start and believe that Pascal really was onto something. Consider the times he lived in. Atheism was growing in Europe and the old arguments for believing in God were fading away. Pascal came up with a new argument for believing in God that I think, to a certain limit, is strong enough for the moment to dam the tide of Atheism. What it is that makes his theory special is that he supports his belief on logic reasoning instead of pure faith. By doing so, he shows us that the modern time of science and enlightenment is here, and I think that that makes the argument even stronger.

 

I agree with Pascal’s Wager in one way. Because as you can see in Pascal’s Wager, he believes that you have nothing to lose if you have faith in God. This makes sense to me, because, honestly, what do you lose? Someone might say that the greatest loss is time. The amount of time a person has lost in worship and devotion that could have been spent on something else. Well, as a matter of fact, I do not see life in that way. My interpretation is that if you live a life where you attempt to be a good Christian, you will find out being that is more than just worship to God. To be a pure Christian is to be a good person, to treat others just as you would like others to treat you (The Golden Rule), and other examples of being empathetic and sympathetic.

 

And yet, there are some things that I find difficult to corporate with in Pascal’s Wagers. Because Pascal said many things that I certainly never would agree with, and as a follower of Jansenism (A movement within Catholicism that highlighted the infinite might of God), Pascal believed that only a chosen group would receive the infinite grace of God, while the other ones would be awarded with a one-way ticket to hell. Here is where my beliefs and Pascal’s differ the most. I do not believe that God’s infinite grace only is given to a chosen group. Instead, I believe that all God’s creatures share his immeasurable grace. Neither do I believe that your final destination will be hell if you do not believe in Christianity. I think that is one of the biggest misunderstandings and mistakes mankind ever have done. I neither believe that we are born sinful nor have to obey God to avoid hell. Actually, if I should be honest, which of course is essential in my own article that I am, I do not believe in hell at all, since according to the Bible, and my interpretation of it, God gave mankind a free will and the opportunity to decide what to do and what not to do. Humans are equipped with feelings, morality and other things to help her in her choices. The adaptation of God where he is evil and sending none-believers to hell is, according to my own opinion, not the real God. This is a god who man has created, not the God who has created man.

 

The question is, why should we believe in God, if he nevertheless will not punish us for not believing in him? I find the answer easy to understand. He might not punish infidelity but who said that he does not reward allegiance? However that question, my dear friends who have read this far to long text, is yet another mind-twister that we will not be likely to find out the truth about yet.

 

As a conclusion, I do not think it is relevant to discover if Christianity is true or false. My opinion is that I see Christianity as a lifestyle where you aim to be an caring and loving human being in a world where war, suffering and fear is part of many peoples’ everyday life. Christianity for me can be a good way to live a good life marked by peace, love and the illusion that everything will, finally, make sense.

 

Please comment on this article and tell my about your opinion!

For more info about Pascal and his Wagers, check out Wikipedia’s featured article about Blaise Pascal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal

 

By: Olof Eriksson


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