Francis Bacon's Four Idols

1. Idols of the Tribe
This notion focuses on the fact that human understanding is flawed, and therefore, cannot be taken as fact or as the measure of things in the universe. Bacon is reflecting back upon the church's idea that humans are just imperfect creatures living in this world, and any observatio or interpretation they make of the world would be considered erroneous, since humans are faulty people. Taking as an example, many people watch the stars and contemplate upon the order of this universe. However, with humans' insatiable greed, we cannot settle on this mere observation and exaggerate the things that we see, and eventually accepting them as truths.

2. Idols of the Cave
This notion also focuses on the misunderstanding of the human people. This idea can sort of relate to the hypothesis that all humans don't have thoughts, but are just simply immitating what they see and observe. Here, Bacon discusses that so much of what people know of being true is from books and other things they learn from other people, and virtually we are left with limited understanding, which is why sometimes it is very hard for us to accept new ideas. People are just so accustomed to their own interests and their own understanding that they can only understand "their" side of the story and seldom try to understand things from another perspective. This is why there is the heavy debate about the creation of thsi world. The scientists can only understand their side of the scientific world, while the church leaders can only comprehend their side of the religious world, which is the cause of why the two sides can never end up in an agreement.

3. Idols of the Market Place
This idea pertains to the theory that people become lost and confused with ellaborate language. It is like people falsely assuming someone's speech as being very intellectual just from listening to the language of the speech, which is not the quintessential quality that makes a speech intellectual. However, when using big words, people have a tendency to become intimidated by these words they don't know, in which case, they simply assume that the person giving the speech is an intellectual based upon their vocabulary, which they use to judge the person. This is exactly what is happening right now as I am doing this assignment. Because this packet is worded so ellaborately, I have a hard time understanding it, which makes me more susceptible to believe in what Bacon is saying, because I don't even know what he is talking about. This idea can also relate to the church when they used heavy wording to make up these phony philosophies to persuade the public, who were uneducated to understand these fancy words that church leaders used to persuade the public people.

4. Idols of the Theatre
This phrase refers to the notion of false learning and demonstration. It is basically violating the fallacy of "faulty use of authority", where just because an idea is supported by a group of intellecutals, it no longer becomes questioned by the public people. Becasue a certain group of highly educated people believe a certain phypothesi to be true does not mean that the idea is in fact true. It ultimately lies in people's negligence, where they assume something to be true becuase it has been that way for a long time and been proved by a select few of intellectual scholars. However, it very well may be that what the scholars proved true may be in fact true, but the idea that people are accepting things just because some group of smart people proved it is what Bacon is talking about here.

Galileo's Faithful Daughter

We all know that Galileo was a brilliant scientist who provided tangible evidence for the idea of heliocentrism that was initially brought up by Copernicus. However, what most people don't know, but we do because we just learned this, is that Galileo had a daughter, named Maria Celeste, who was alwasy there to support her father. Maria Celeste was born on August 12, 1600 in Padua, Italy. Because of Galileo never married, making Maria Celeste a child with little value for marriage, he sent her to live in the San Matteo Convent. Maria Celeste, as a daughter, was second to none other as far as supporting her father and showing her love for him. She provided Galileo with food that she grows, make her father his own medicine with the herbs she picks, does his laundry, and even also helps her father publish his book. So after all, while I acknolwedge Galileo's tenacity and his love for astronomy, without the help of his daughter, he wouldn't have been able to accomplish all he did. Maria Celeste also helped her father, via letters, by telling him what to say in front of the inquisition committee to save himself. She really was a devout daughter who lived her life supporting her father and helping him.

Thomas Aquinas' Best/Worst Arguments

Today was a fun day in class, spending time arguing against Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways of proving the existence of God. And we all love debunking people's arguments miserably into pieces, despite the fact that I would have to agree with Aquinas' stance on this whole issue. Well, with no further due, as much as I agree with his principles, there are clearly many fallacious reasoning in Aquinas' arguments.

Personally, I think all of Aquinas' "scientific" evidence all virtually revolve around one overarching theme, which is the notion that things just don't appear by themselves and they all need a creator who makes the thing come out into reality. However, if I were to choose the worst argument, it would be Argument #4: The Argument form Degrees and Perfection. As established in class that all of the arguments violate "begging the question" fallacy, the fourth argument, on top of this fallacy, just doesn't make proper coherence with the previous premises. (not to say that the other arguments made much coherence, but this one is just out of the window) Although I certainly believe that God is the result of perfection, his reasoning is wrong. Taking the sculptures example, we can clearly argue that just because one sculpture is better does not authorize us with the right to assume that the better sculpture of the two is worse when compared to another, which is worse when compared to another one, and so on until you compare it with perfection. First of all, if and all, we can't ever view perfection. If God does epitomized perfection, and we can't see him, then we would never know what "perfect" means, so we can safely sit down and argue that one thing can ever be compared to perfection, but just so far as being close to perfeciton. This brings up another point. Who says that the one statue that looks better on one person is going to be better in the eyes of another person? Different people have their different tastes and their focal emphasis when it comes to judging things like sculptures, so we can't presume that just because one statue looks better for one person, or even the majority, that the sculpture does represent a sculpture of higher value.

With this said, Aquinas also has a very good point in his Five Ways in Argument #2: Causation of Existence. This is basically the reason why I believe in creationism, although I am a little bit skeptic about the Earth being 60,000 years old only. Basically, here, Aquinas argues that nothing could have existed by itself and there had to be a thing or an object that was created without being needed the dependence of another object to be created. Going back to the watch theory, if there is a watch on a desk, then we would subcontiously know that someone must have made the watch, for it could not have popped out of nowhere. However, God, the good old God our savior, he is an exception to the rule. The reason why we call him God in the first place is because he is of supernatural origin that has powers beyond our imagination, or at least we believe so. If this premise holds true, then we can't count God into the circular argument about "Oh, who created God?" because the fact of the matter is, nobody or nothing created God. He was always there. This is something we have to accept if we want to get anywhere, or else we would always be arguing about the origin of God forever. As said before, God is above us. Even atheists, who don't believe in God, would at least acknolwedge the fact that divinities, whether they exist or not, have powers beyond humans. Therefore, to argue against the existence of God with human logic is incoherent, because God does not apply to our imagination.

I have a great little story with this. When I was little, I always loved looking at ants for some reason. (everyone has their unique side) Now, imagine, if I were to blow using my mouth gently towards the colony of ants, would the ants, with their limited knowledge, be able to figure out that there is a being that is clearly above their own level that is making the wind or would they just simply believe that there was a gentle wind that blew? With ant's limited knowledge, they probably cannot know of the fact that there exists the humans, who are "higher" in level compared to the ants that caused the wind to happen. This is the same thing with God. We just don't know that God is there becuase we have such a limited knowledge on things and with our limited knowledge it is very hard to fathom God's exitence at all.

St. Augustine and Gothic Architecture

Chipotle? Baja Fresh? or In-n-Out? At the moment, probably Chipotle... Is my decision to choose Chipotle really my decision or was it sealed in fate that I was going to choose Chipotle? If I change my mind to Baja Fresh, would that account for fate also?

Fortunately, I am ignorant enough to not really spend too much time contemplating about these issues, becuase I wouldn't have time to do my CORE homework like this blog entry. However, for St. Augustine, he really had deep thoughts on whether humans really had the power to free will or whether we are all playing dumb under God. Well, it seems rather clear that he believed in free will over the destined fate, as indicative of the fact that he wrote a doctrine on free will. Freedom under Augustine's definition is the capacity for doing what one wants. So even if God, or any other supernatural being, already knows what a person wants, it does not have an effect in causing a person to take certain actions. With this said, St. Augustine also blieved that (he believed in a lot of things) humans have a tendency to make bad decisions based on their sensory knowledge and not by the divine wisdom, an idea that destroyed the purpose of people being able to have the power to choose in the first place. There is no point of us making decisions ourselves if we continuously made bad decisions, and to St. Augustine, our decision based upon our sensory knowledge was a bad decision, for he believed that only through divine wisdom can we cleanse ourselves and achieve happiness through making the better decisions. To do that, he figured the only way possible was via God's grace, which allows us to access his good. It is only through introspection that we may be able to recieve God's grace, which enabled us with the "inner experience".

Now the Gothic Architecture of the time can be a great reflection of St. Augustine's Neo-Platonic belief of divine wisdom and how we can achieve it. First of all, Gothic architecture was heavily elaborate with meticulous designs and fantastic, almost ostentatious, architecture both on the exterior and on the interior. Now, taking a look at the interior designing of Gothic architecture, there are many stained glass windows that reflect the suns's lights that light the building in an aura of beautiful lights everywhere. The main purpose of Gothic architecture was to let light inside the building. This architecture can connect with St. Augustine's doctrine in that many followers of Christian religion, most of whom were illiterate at the time, can enjoy the beautiful and aesthetic pictures on the stained glass windows, which will help them to introspect to get to the Beatific Vision. The designs on the stained glass windows, for this purpose, mainly included scenes form the Bible, so that people don't have to take the extra effort to become literate and read the Bible, but be able to quickly visualize scenes form the Bible so that they can have a better grasp of their faith, almost like catharsisin a way. By looking at the art, they are purging themselves of their sensory knowledge and taking on the goods through introspection.

Hitler's Fallacy

So today in class, we read a short segment of Hitler's Mein Kampf, particularly the section dealing with nation and race. Well, as if we could'nt have alrady guessed, Hitler being the perso he is, obviously writes about his justification of Aryan superiority. However, his arguments are full of fallacies everywhere.

Within the article, Hilter states, "Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level". In this short segement, Hitler is litterally arguing against interracial marriages, where he states that the interracial kid will be lie in between the two parents, higher than the inferior (Hitler implying the darker skinned parent), but lower than the superior parent (the Aryan parent). Therefore, Hitler argues that, under the will of Nature for a higher breeding of life, interracial marriages cannot happen.

In this section, Hitler is guilty of violating the "begging the question" fallacy. First of all, begging the question is a logical fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. In this case, it is clear that as for Hitler, he is convinced that the non-Aryans are inferior to the Aryan race, although there is no proof that the non-Aryans are indeed inferior than than the Aryan people. Hitler's main thesis for chapter 11 of mein kampf is to prove that Aryan race is better than the non-Aryan race, yet here Hitler falsely assumes, probably for his own personal belief and convenience, that the non-Aryans are inferior. How can Hitler argue that the Aryans are the superior race it, at the back of his mind, he has already taken on the presumption that the non-Aryans are inferior? It seems as if Hitler finds it only natural that a person would think the non-Aryans are inferior, when in fact there is not a single warrant and date to support his testimony.

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

Just as a building serves as an absolute proof that there must have been an architect who designed the building and the construction workers who helped build the building, the same principle applies for our universe as well. There has to be a creator to something in this universe, becasue things don't just appear and disappear on a whim. Just like the watchmaker analogy in the article stated by William Paley, if we see a watch, we are quickly to analyze, in a subcontious manner, that the watch has been made by someone.

Perhaps all of the issues of intelligent design lies in the fact of the unknwon being, the inconceivable. We just simply don't know whether God exists or any other divinity for that matter, who created this universe. However, to this notion, Dr. Wernher von Braun, the Father of the American Rocket and Space Program, replies, "Must we really light a candle to see the Sun? …The electron is materially inconceivable, and yet it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airliners through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real, while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive of Him? …The inconceivability of some ultimate issue (which always will lie outside scientific resolution) should not be allowed to rule out any theory that explains the interrelationship of observed data and is useful for prediction."

Just by our uncertainty of the unkown should not be a rationale against the idea of intelligent design. Gratned there are many scientists who try to provide "scientific" data to prove this principle wrong and claim that evolution is correct. Simply put, it is just a known fact: that ideas and concepts require an intelligent designer. Things and ideas cannot just spring from nothingness, there must have been a creator.

Under intelligent design, there is the notion of "irreducible complexity" by Michael Behe. Irreducible complexity, as defined by Michael Behe himself is, "a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning" He is basically saying that there are certain things that have to be present in order for things to work. To illustrate this point, Behe uses the example of a moustrap, which is composed of several parts - the base, the spring, and the hammer. If any of these parts, which all serve as integral asset of a moustrap, are missing, then the moustrap would not be able to serve its function. Similarly, the world could not have funcitoned without there being an intelligent designer who created certain parts of this universe, (i.e. the base, the catch, and the spring), which people integrated together to make a moustrap.

Therefore, the world could not have created from nothingness, as everything that is created has a creator behind it who designed it.

RE: President Obama has made affirmative action irrelevant

Today we had an interesting discussion about the resolution that states that Barack Obama's inauguration has made affirmative action irrelevant. However, I strongly disagree.

First off, let's define what affirmative action is, because it is always important to know what we are arguing about. Affirmative action means positive steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded. (taken from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philsophy)

Before I go on, I just like to point out one thing. Clearly, as Mr. Basinger said, the resolution was about whether Obama's electio has made affirmative action irrelevant or not. However, we ended up debating about the IDEA of affirmative action, whether it is justified or not, and not about the core issue of the resolution.

With this said, I strongly believe that Obama's climb to the top executive in our country did not prove a bit that makes affirmative action irrelevant. We have to take a look into the fact that he is just one person, as brought up in the debate, and his rise to success does not mean that we should overthrow this idea. America is a country founded upon equal opportunities for all, and we have to have this policy instituted in our government to continue to expand on our works. Just because we have a handful of minority who rose from literally nothing to their positions today (i.e. Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Collin Powell) should not be a motive to take this issue out of our consideration, because matter of factly, there are still too many minorities suffering from harsh circumstances that needs opportunities available for them to at least be able to have a chance of becoming successful and have a taste of the American Dream.

Now, going back to the idea of Affirmative Action, one of the most heavily regarded argument against the idea of Affirmative Action is that they pick less qualified individuals to a certain position over others who are well qualified just for the sake of filling the status quo of certain race, usually minority. However, for me personally, this is just a fact we have to accept and move on. To begin with, it's the people who do not get what they want that complains about how affirmative action has put them in a shithole. We can't have a school with just one dominant race or else much of the minority will not be able to get accepted to colleges, becasue many of them had not lived in the same circumstances as the non-minorities who had the educational background and the support that the minority kids did not receive. It is through affirmative action that we can promote racial equality for all. Even from the school's perspective, they can't accept all asians because Asians tend to be smart, although they might accept more Asian kids relatively compared to the Asian population in America. If we accpet kids solely based on performace, then chances are, schools will not be able to have racial diversity in school, as non-minorities who have had extra support from their parents and other places make them better qualified when applying for a university.

The problem with performance based accpetance is that academics is not he only asset in our world. There was a famous Supreme Court case known as Bakke vs. the University of California - Davis, where this one white student did not receive admittance from UC Davis because the school was trying to promote racial equality. Now imagine if Mr. Bakke had been accepted, would he have truly complained about affirmative action? Probably not. This proves that what the opponents of affirmative action are not disagreeing with its function, but rather because affirmative action has put them at a disadvantage. Nothing in this world is perfect, as everything has multiple viewpoints. Furthermore, taking things statistically, in the USA reports as of 2008, 5% of American population are Asian while 12% are Black and 15% are Hispanic. So, theoretically, schools should only admit Asian kids that would fill up 5% of the school's student body. However, because of the general occurence that Asian kids work hard, most schools accept more Asian kids relatively compared to their racial percentage in the United States, where schools like UC Berkeley have 45% Asians and other prestigious schools with Asian students that take up more than 10% of the school's student body. However, at the same time, while Asian kids tend to be smarter, there has to come a limit on how the number of kids from one ethnic background. And we have to understand that the minority to do get into colleges did well relatively compared to people of their race. I read other people's blogs and many of them gave out hypothetical statistics. However, what they fail to recognize is that the minority kid who might have a worse academic profile still did better compared to kids of their race while the non-minority kid who has the better profile but didn't get in probably scored lower relatively compared with people of their own race. The bottom line is this, if a student gets rejected, then there is a reason why they are rejected. The reason may be rational or irrational, but thats not up to the students to judge. After all, the school is admitting kids as a GROUP, not individually. They look at all the kids they accept as one class, not of hundreds of individuals, and therefore, racial equality is a significant matter. The schools take kids based on their needs, not whether we are qualified or not.

Therefore, I sincerely believe in affirmative action.