Philosophy of Skepticism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Philosophy of Skepticism - Essay Example Being born in the 80s made me very much aware of the traditions, beliefs and fads during that time. My personal interests depended on the interests of the people I live with. If I have lived during the time of slavery, my interest would have been related to freedom and equality. There is no absolute freedom but I have the free will to choose which information and beliefs I would want to base my life upon. I would prefer not to get everything that I ever wanted. Suffering is part of man's life which is destined to be imperfect and man has to strive to make the best out of what we have been blessed with. Man always wants what he does not have. 3. Plato's cave-dwellers discover that the source of their so- called knowledge, their senses has been giving them false information about the world. How reliable are our senses as a source of knowledge Plato rejects the senses as a source of knowledge. Do you agree with him Why or why not In consonance with his theory of Idealism, Plato propounded the view that man, in his present earthly existence is only an imperfect copy of his real, original self, the perfect man, in the realm of ideas. In such a perfect state as pure mind, man knew all things by direct intuition. Thus, according to Plato, man was omniscient, all-knowing, before he came to be born into this world. With his separation however from the paradise of truth and knowledge and his long exile on earth, he forgot most of the knowledge he had. To Plato the ideas are inborn, already present in the mind of man from birth, but these are partly forgotten memories obscured owing to man's life term confinement on earth, in the prison house of the senses. They only have to be revived and recalled. The things that we perceive on earth, according to Plato, are merely shadows, pale reminders of the truths man already knew truly and fully before his terrestrial imprisonment. I disagree with Plato on his idea about the senses. I believe that through sensation and perception, man is able to learn and acquire knowledge and ideas. When we sense something, it can be considered as first-hand information because that is something that can be empirically proven. 4. Does Descartes ever prove in his first meditation that we are not dreaming Why or why not We might appreciate the philosophical viewpoint that Descartes develops to be discernible and defined by the skepticism and cynicism he communicates in the First Meditation. He starts by asking how he can be certain or sure of anything and then develops all kinds of imaginative and outlandish reasons as to why he have to to mistrust his senses. Philosophy ever since has been known a constant skepticism toward knowledge claims, and the very question of how we can come to know anything with certainty has been much argued. Skepticism also informs the mind-body predicament which has come to identify our formation of the human mind. Descartes develops a conception of the mind where the senses and the imagination are also mental faculties. Further, he states that we are essentially thinking things that can be acquainted with our minds clearly and distinctly, but must exert much effort and strive harder to come to an understanding of our bodies. Most significant, he comes up with a very intelligent distinction between mind and body. Mind is essentially think

The Stagnation of Content in the Making of Movies Essay

The Stagnation of Content in the Making of Movies - Essay Example While some of these films are successful, others are box office failures. Motives for releasing a remake runs the gamut of saving money, exploiting a popular plot or theme, or capitalizing on the current cultural trends. However, they saturate the movie market and drown the public in a stagnant pool of rehashed content. We, as a society, need to break outside our own self-inflicted monotony, and let our imagination run rampant once again, or else our society may forever be caught in the endless miasma of mediocre entertainment, and with it, our future forced into dull drudgery. The propensity of the Hollywood studios to remake a foreign film is exemplified with the cashing in on the pop culture's current cult buzz. A prime example of this phenomenon is the Japanese movie The Ring (1998), which is one of the most horrifying and the highest grossing films ever to be released in Japan. Its success spawned a series of remakes such as in Korea as The Ring Virus (1999) and in the United States as The Ring (2002). The studios did not have to take the risk of inventing new characters, setting, or plot. They simply moved forward on a tried and true formula that had previously been successful. ... The studio's attempt to save money by reproducing more of the same actually resulted in heavy losses. While the original Ring grossed $129 million, the sequel The Ring Two pulled in a paltry final figure of $75 million in the United States ("Japanese Horror Remake"). This is evidence that the viewing public can get tired of their fond memories, as movie producers fail to deliver on their promises of enhancing and tastefully paying homage to the previous films by taking short cuts and recycling old ideas. Watching a well-made film repeatedly may be far more enjoyable than seeing it repackaged with unfamiliar actors and different production values. A good example of this is the Hitchcock film Psycho (1960). This film is so tense and well crafted that the remake has had great difficulty in living up to its expectations. When a remake is released, the public and the critics will naturally compare it to the original version. The critics at Moviefone called Invasion (2007), Nicole Kidman's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), "ridiculous, overwrought ... and worst of all, boring" ("Worst Movie Remakes of all Time"). Other films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of Wax, and the planned Evil Dead suffer from the audience's high standards when comparing then to the original. The financial effort to save money on a remake almost assures the public that they will see nothing new, and probably the best they can hope for is some enhanced technology in the special effects. The remake of the highly acclaimed Alfie (1966) was remade starring Jude Law, and was panned by critics as, "a hollow, cynical shell of the charming