John Locke and the Right to Property
John Locke: Basis of the Right to Property John Locke was considered highly influential in establishing grounds, conceptually at least, for the constitution of the United States of America. The basis for understanding Locke is that he sees all people as having natural God given rights. This religious backdrop acts as the foundation for all of Locke's theories, including his theories of individuality, private property, and the state. Through Locke's Second Treatise of Government, an explanation as to how and why people have a natural right to property, along with the way government pertains to property, can be determined. In addition, the differences between property in the state of nature and under a government are presented in Locke's text. Locke believed that humans were independent individuals who had an ability to reflect, think, and reason intellectually, which was one of the many gifts from God. This was a gift which separated humans from the domain of the beast (Section 26). All reason and reflection is based on personal experience and reference (Section 26). Personal experience must be completely individual as no one can experience anything quite the same as another. This leads to determining why Locke believed that all humans have a natural right to property. Every man is a creation of God's, and is granted with certain individual abilities and characteristics
Can free will and determination coexist?
Can free will and determination coexist? Some philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes have argued that the two can not coexist because of environment in which one lives. However, if one closely examines the arguments for the compatibility of free will and determinism the association is striking. The articles of soft determination lend themselves to the coexistence of free will and determinism in the individual. Therefore, an argument could easily be made that free will and determinism are compatible with each other and can coexist even if the environment the individual is living in does not allow the existence of either. Free will is the ability to act freely. Put simply, free will is the ability to act as one wishes. In order to perform an action two events have to take place. One of these events is that of freely thinking and deciding of an action to take, without any interference from the external world. The second event that must take place is the actual action itself, again without any interference from the outside world. Interference or external forces would be something like another person or force stopping an action or thought from taking place. Hence, interfering with the free will of the individual. Determinism has many aspects and theories; however, the theory that relates most to the compatibility of free will is that of soft determinism. Soft
Assess Utilitarianism
Asses Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory of morality (contrasted with a deontological theory). This means that it bases the moral weight of actions on its consequences, not on the intention (as in deontology). For example, if I was to buy my friend some food I thought he didn't like to annoy him, but it then turned out that it was his favourite food, then that would be a moral act. I think that in many ways Utilitarianism is a good theory, but I disagree with many of the points, as I shall outline. Utilitarianism was first thought of by Jeremy Bentham, and put to paper in his book, 'An Introduction To The Principles Of Morality' in 1780. He stated that "the sole principle that we ought to live and judge others by is utility." His theory was that humans are by nature hedonistic, i.e. we live to find pleasure and avoid pain. From this he drew "The Principle of Utility", which was the "Greatest Happiness" principle. This meant that we must follow a moral system that maximises pleasure and minimises pain for ourselves and our community, because psychological hedonism would imply ethical hedonism. In order to work out the morality of an act, Bentham devised a "Utility Calculus", which was meant to be an easy way to make a moral decision. The problem was that it was anything but simple. The calculus was composed of five steps: . Determine the amount of
Shakespeare described death as 'the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns'. There are those who would argue that people have returned from 'the undiscovered country'. Discuss the evidence put forward as proof that there is life after
Shakespeare described death as 'the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns'. There are those who would argue that people have returned from 'the undiscovered country'. Discuss the evidence put forward as proof that there is life after death, and the form that life after death might take. There are many different views about what happens after we die. Some people would argue that death is simply the end and that this life is all there is. However others would argue that life continues after death. Those who argue for a life after death take many different views on the form of life, ranging from reincarnation to total body resurrection. Their approach to life after death is mainly hinged upon one key concept, whether they take a materialist approach and see the body and soul as one or take a dualist approach and see them as two different completely entities. Those who take a dualist approach may argue that the body is just trapping the soul until the time of death at which point it is released. If a materialist approach is taken the body and soul are viewed as one and they cannot survive with out the other. Therefore as the body and soul are one and cannot be separated, death is either the end or the life after death must be that of a full body resurrection. John Hick took the latter approach and developed his replica theory. He argues that in certain
The verification principle offers no real challenge to religious belief. Discuss
'The verification principle offers no real challenge to religious belief.' Discuss I would like to start this essay by explaining the background to Verification Principle. Verification is a philosophical movement which claims that language is only meaningful if it can be verified by a sense- observation or it is a tautology. The verification movement was influenced by science, which emphasized the importance of confirming any statement by observation eg through experiment. Moritz, Schlick and other supporters of the verification pointed out that the meaningfulness of statements is shown by the method by which you verify the statement. If you cannot demonstrate with sense-observations how a statement is true, then the statement is factually meaningless. Personally, I agree with the verification principle in some aspects, for example things can be verified by using sense observations and that its challenges the religious belief of God. There are also some stronger and weaker challenges which I will explain later on. Verificationists argue that any statement that cannot be proved true or false is meaningless. Language that talks about God is meaningless for a verificationist as there is no way to demonstrate the truth or falsity of God. However one problem with early verificationism's strict scientific approach is that it would mean that many statements people make are
"Religious experience must be true because there is a common core to them all" Discuss.
"Religious experience must be true because there is a common core to them all" Discuss. The Bible claims that God can be directly experienced and philosophers such as William James saw religion as essentially based on experience and that such experience should be the primary basis of study of religion as opposed to practices and dogma. Indeed many of the world's major religions are based on experience or revelation of the transcendent to mankind. Yet religious experience is intrinsically enormously subjective. Arguably two of the most complicated issues to discuss in any context and reach an objective opinion on are God and personal experience. As individuals we are incapable of personally experiencing things which happen to somebody else, it is impossible. If we add this to the fact that religious experience is of the divine and the transcendent it becomes apparent that by its very nature it is extremely difficult to assess or comment on anything viewed as a 'religious experience'. One thing which may make it an easier phenomenon to understand is the theory that there is a common core to all these, this could be seen as something within the nature of religious experience such as a numinous feeling or the sheer individual quality, or something that happens after the event such as a drastic life change. However do comparable aspects of different experience make them any more
How to create a completely peaceful world. To create a fully peaceful world, both Federalism and non-violent resistance are necessary. Federalism and non-violent resistance can cooperate well to completely eliminate war in the world.
Create a completely peaceful world by Hao Chen ID:043070440 PP 230 April 2, 2007 Chen 1 To create a fully peaceful world, both Federalism and non-violent resistance are necessary. Federalism and non-violent resistance can cooperate well to completely eliminate war in the world. In this essay, I am arguing that neither federalism nor non-violent resistance can achieve a peaceful world independently. War comes from conflicts between communities or nations. We can find the roots of conflicts from human nature. I believe that the human nature is a complex combination including both Hobbes' human nature theory and Hegel's master and slave theory. By looking at human nature, we can see that federalism, which aims to establish a powerful global government, and non-violent resistance, which includes demonstrations, obstruction, refusal to cooperate, boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and so on, can deal with the conflicts and achieve peace (Awad 158). In the real world, however, there are some challenges to set up a powerful global federal government and perform the non-violent resistance policy. The challenges are unsolved in this essay. Firstly, a single world government with its own dominant army is one of the necessary prerequisite for a peaceful world. The reason comes from Hobbes' human nature theory. Hobbes believes that human nature is the drive for gain, safety
The Sniper
Analyse and discuss Descartes' cogito Descartes was brought up to believe in many of the certainties of the medieval world and the bible. Over time, however, many of these certainties he was being taught were being questioned and replaced by science or reason - rationalism. Descartes was a famous scientist and philosopher in his day; who was the origin of his sceptical nature. He grew to become uncertain about all his existing beliefs, and was motivated to search for secure certainties upon which to ground science. Descartes hoped to find some true belief amongst the false ones, which stem from our everyday belief system - naïve or common-sense realism. This was Descartes' quest, which was achieved only after he employed his famous 'method of doubt', a radical kind of global scepticism. This method of doubt tried to suspend judgment about all the things he previously took for granted. In effect, everything that could possibly be doubted was treated as false for the sake of argument. If after following this method he arrived at some thing which could not be doubted, i.e. something which was indubitable, then he would have reached a point of absolute certainty. Descartes therefore writes that; "if I can find any grounds for doubt at all, this will be enough to justify my rejecting the whole edifice". This argument appeared in Descartes first meditation, and was the basis,
How far does the Ontological argument provide the existence of God?
How far does the Ontological argument provide the existence of God? 'Ontological' means 'nature of being. It is a branch of metaphysics and set of entities presupposed by a theory. It states that if we understand the meaning of the word God we will realise that God exists, it is in the very nature of God that he should exist. And God wouldn't be God if he didn't exist. The ontological argument answers the question 'What is the concept of God?' It is an 'a priori' argument, not an argument based on the interpretation of evidence but an argument before experience. This is dissimilar to an 'a posteriori' argument which only gives merely probability unlike an 'a priori' argument, which can be sound and offer reliable proof. It's an argument based on Logic. Logical truths are true by definition. We know they are true independently of experience e.g. We do not need to check that all circle as are round because a circle cannot be anything else but round, it is tur by definition. In order to determine the soundness of the argument, we need to consider, not the probability of any evidence but the logical coherence of the argument. To analyse the logical coherence we must look to whether you can define something into existence and also 'Is existence a predicate?' There are two main principal contributors to the 'classical argument' St Anselm of Canterbury and Rene Descartes. Anselm's
Discuss the suggestion that it is pointless to analyse religious experience
Discuss the suggestion that it is pointless to analyse religious experience Religious experience, by its very nature, is a realm of religion that cannot be empirically scrutinised to the extent that a scientific consensus can be found. The question however still arises as to whether there is sufficient cause or worth to analyse religious experience, or whether, at best it is merely a superstitious delusion by the individual, or at worst a method propagated by the religious institutions intentionally to compound its unaccountability. Many thinkers have posited over religious experience, and although many have spoken at length on the subject, there are those that view the analysis of the actual religious experience as meaningless. However this is by no means split between secular and religious thinkers, although they do evidently have a different approach to the experience. First, it is important to define (roughly due to the imprecise nature of the topic) what religious experience shall mean. It is an unexplainable subjective experience of contact with what the individual believes to be a transcendent or supernatural being. In this case, one may be able to say with a fair degree of reliability that a majority of religious believers hold the view that religious experience is genuinely an encounter with God or the holy spirit. Although the average religious believer (especially
