Summary of Chapter: Reason
This chapter focused on reasoning, thinking, and knowledge as well as dealing with epistemology, which is the study of knowledge. Many western philosophers, tracing all the way back to Aristotle, have studied/thought about epistemology. We discussed the different ways humans receive knowledge. These three kinds of knowledge are experience, authority, and reason. A lot of the knowledge human’s have come through their senses; therefore they experience something, and therefore learn stuff about it. Besides experience, there is also authority. The vast majority of our knowledge comes from other people, books, or authority figures. Reason is the final kind of knowledge we talked about. Humans use reason to understand and learn more. There are two main types of reasoning, deduction and induction. Deduction is when someone takes two ideas which are already known/thought to be true (premises) and come up with a third new idea (conclusion). Induction is when someone makes a universal claim based off of their experiences of the world. The main point of this chapter is to teach us that reasoning is an essential part of the process of gaining knowledge and understanding. Thinking or belief alone is no reason to make a decision. This chapter also shows us the different kinds of errors that can occur during reasoning, and by doing this it attempts to keep us from repeating these mistakes.
Father Braun's Sermon: "Imagine There's a Heaven"
Father Gary Braun is Wash U’s Catholic Student Center’s director as well as a great priest. In class, we listened to one of his sermons, which is titled “Imagine There’s a Heaven”. In the sermon, Father Braun discusses the possibility of heaven existing. He gave an excellent metaphor for heaven and the world. The world we are now living in is like a womb, and we are like fetuses. Despite the fact that everyone knows there is a larger, better world outside the womb, the fetus does not and fears leaving the womb. He challenged the audience to answer the question for them selves “what is the truth?” My family has been looking for a new mass to attend lately and I suggested we go to Wash U’s mass. My parents both agreed that is a great idea and so we decided that we would go to Wash U’s mass this weekend.
Fear of the Cost
Why do people often choose not to believe in religion, scientific discoveries or even others? This question is a very philosophical and theological question. Why would anyone ever choose to deny something they may know is true? This chapter gives a simple answer to these questions. People fear the cost of believing in something. Many important theological and scientific discoveries have been ignored by many people because there is a chance that if they chose to believe in these things there lives might change for the worst. The idea that people fear the cost of beliefs, ideas, and even truths is important in understanding humanity. The challenge that this answer creates is for us to overcome our “fear of the cost.”
Masura Emoto's Water Experiment
The water experiment was a controversial experiment that took place under the supervision of Dr. Masaru Emoto of Japan. Dr. Emoto claims that he discovered that if you direct thoughts to water the frozen molecules will come out as either beautiful or ugly depending on what type of thoughts you directed towards it. The scientific community has argued about the findings of this experiment and many claim that there were many mistakes in the process. In What the Bleep Do We Know, the experiment is discussed. The question that the movie left us asking was “if our thoughts can do that to water, what can they do to us?” We discussed this idea a little in class and we decided that our thoughts definitely have an affect on our personality, emotions, and even our physical appearance.