Sophie's World - 7

"A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little." (Sophie’s World)

This quote seems to have real meaning for me.  This quote, as I understood it, says that all of the people who have great knowledge and use that knowledge to answer what they do not know are not philosophers.  Philosophers are instead, people who know they know nothing of the real world no matter how much they learn; these people do not answer philosophical questions they interpret and digest them, discovering their true meaning in order to learn what the question poses to offer.  The quote seems to be almost scientific in nature, in science you need to prove something with your knowledge, but every advancement made sets you back with all the questions it opens up, such as if we discover how to travel at the speed of light we would then have to answer the question where do we go and many unknown more.  The idea that every advancement only proves how little you know is very scientific in nature, and this idea seems to manifest itself in math and science but not any other foundation of learning.

Connection - 7

District 9 was, in my opinion, both terrible and stupendous.  I recently watched District 9 for the first time in my science fiction class; it was a dull enjoyment to be honest.  The amazing quality of film technique and the great roles portrayed really brought the movie to life for me.  Unfortunately this was a blessing and a curse, the movie was so captivating that the gruesome portrayal of the main character’s transformation seemed even more disgusting.  I was thoroughly disappointed at the pieces the director decided to show as “realistic”.

The film had an interesting message though, it portrayed human abuse of the “prawns” or aliens.  The Prawns were originally cared for but eventually shunned as humans did not want to have to change their life-styles to accommodate the vastly different aliens.  The fact that the movie takes place in South Africa must also have poetic meaning; South Africa, the “home to apartheid” just relived its past with the prawns until one man decided enough was enough, to get out from behind his desk and fight back against the human oppression for the prawns.  Given he was turning into a prawn and he was no longer accepted into human society, but he still did fight for the prawns.  I guess if you took a philosophical approach, such as with Kant’s opinion, he was doing things immorally because of his intent to save himself, but anyway the movie was good in its less gruesome scenes.

Sophie's World - 6

In “Sophie’s World” Sophie ends with a garden party, the party goes strangely awry and it seems that it all strange.  The first ridiculous thing that happens is that Alberto, the philosopher, throws firecrackers into the yard, following this he puts a sparkler into the almond cake, not very normal behavior.  This could all be explained as just strange until Joanna tries to eat Jeremy and the attack each other with terrifyingly unexpected passion.  When Alberto reveals to the party guests that they are all fictional characters (or at least characters in Albert’s book) the logical rational thinking in the party just goes farther away the guests aren’t happy and Sophie’s Mother does not want her to leave at first, right after this Joanna begins to smear cake onto Jeremy’s face and lick it off.  Finishing with a religious meaning Sophie mentions how her Garden of Eden is now destroyed, and Alberto answers that she has been driven out.  Sophie and Alberto than disappear from Sophie’s den just before they are nearly run over by a Mercedes.  The strangeness of the chapter doesn’t seem to fit with the strangeness from other parts of the book, and points to the fact that we may know nothing of our own world.

Sophie's World - 5

Marx’s idea that philosophy should be practical is, in my personal opinion, one of his better and more reasonable theories.  The idea that philosophy should be more practical must have been around before Marx, it seems like such a simple request to be made.  The traditional questions of philosophy, such as why are we here, where did we come from, as well as other things like is religion correct and how should we view the world to live the best lives all seem to be missing the point.  What matters here and now is that a new more perfect system must be evolved through human thought, philosophy, to control and balance out the human imperfection.  Ideally to leave us in not a state of bliss but a state of harmony, a balance between failure and success that leaves us aspiring and moral.  Preferably without the need to destroy those who don’t agree.  This type of system could probably never work, due to the fact that it would rely on trusting in the idea that no one will take advantage of the system, unfortunately this is the same problem Marx’s communism had and now we are left with the communism we know today and find oppressive.

Connections - 6

Recently I was introduced to the Symphony of Science; one of the more interesting videos is entitled “A Wave of Reason”(linked below).  This video takes several different lectures and videos from many different scientists and cuts then together; the creator then auto-tuned the entire video to make it into a song.  The song is essentially summing up modern day reason, the fact that science is not something very different from religion.  In the song Carl Sagan mentions that science is more than a structure of ideas like religion, it is a form of thinking, of skeptically inquiring.  Lawrence Krauss is added in stating that science is a way to interpret the real, magnificent, world, and the only true way.  Phil Plait, around 1:28, states that if you can teach a man to reason he will think for a life time.  An interesting philosophy, reason and logic, basically the scientific mindset, are the root to philosophy, which makes a lot of sense.  Aristotle interpreted the world through science and perception, while some philosophers believe this is pointless it is the only thing that we have to rely on besides ourselves, and I don’t think anyone could be amazing to the point of no longer needing outside influence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PT90dAA49Q&feature=related

Connection - 5

You can’t really answer the question often hinted to in Inception, when you take off all of the extra science fiction baggage you are really just left with “is your world real?”  Now many people would think that it was a stupid question and that of course their world is real, after all what else could there be?  But if you think philosophically about the question you get into “fried noodle territory”.   There is no way to justify that your world isn’t real, so we have to assume it is or be thrown into chaos ourselves.  What would be the purpose of anything if we were in a “dream world”?  And anyway, according to Inception we could probably just kill ourselves to wake up¹.

If we were living outside of reality other people wouldn’t be in our dream, except for a few, everyone else would just be a projection of our imagination.  Would this mean that by destroying building or killing people we would be destroying our own sub-consciousness?  According to the movie we wouldn’t be but I still feel that destruction of parts of a dream would cause the dreamer to forget about those projections it made and possibly the memories under those projections.

Maybe the reason something seems familiar or that time seems to slow down or speed up and other strange phenomena could be caused by the fact that we are all hooked up to a machine in some hospital or military facility.  And these oddities are us seeing that we are in a maze before we get distracted or disoriented, similar to trying to remember a dream, even if it just happened.

¹ – not a good idea to try out