Monday, April 15, 2013

WP 3 very rough draft


Writing project 3

Religious studies what is that. Religious studies are defined as a program that engages in the comparative, cross-cultural study of religions and cultures. It also focuses on various disciplinary approaches, including the historical, sociological, anthropological and theological, the academic study of religion seeks to interpret, analyze and evaluate the nature and role of religion in the lives of individuals and societies. One could break this program down into several parts. First being religions. Second being cultures. The third being the disciplinary approaches.   

For the disciplinary approaches, I would define it as a concentrated area of interest. But scholars define it as the development of studies, theories, and process. In one article I read it focuses on the psychological and thought process of things also referred to as knowledge. Titled; “Knowledge essentially based upon false beliefs”. It is written by Avram Hiller. The beginning part of the article is based mostly on an agent an agent is a person who acts on behalf of another. Where he makes statements like knowledge is that the agent’s belief is not essentially based on any false assumptions. Then he calls theses false assumptions the nonessential-false-assumption account, or NEFA. Throughout the article he refers to NEFA a lot. He uses examples from other philosophers and shows how NEFA can refer to their situation. He then describes how everything has justification to it. He shows what this agent person (his secretary) uses as claims for justification. He says the reason why the agent has knowledge despite the causal role that the falsehood plays is that there is another proposition – the proposition that the secretary said that the appointment is on Monday – which meets three conditions: (1) it is also justified by the apparent memory (2) it is true, and (3) it justifies the belief. Because there is available to the agent a second proposition that meets these conditions even if the agent doesn’t explicitly believe the proposition. He then goes to say even if the person doesn’t believe these things it has to be true due to logic and the use of logos. And not everything can be proven using NEFA. After a long rant of useful information he sums up everything in a few sentences which comes down to: there is a plausible alternative account of knowledge which handles the cases appropriately and which thus demands further examination. Here is where I would insert my interview findings”.

This is just the rough draft. I would continue this process for the two other parts of the discipline and I feel this should put me on the right track.

 

 

 

Monday, April 8, 2013

WP #3


The first article/journal I am using for my essay is titled Knowledge essentially based  upon false beliefs. It is written by Avram Hiller. The beginning part of the article is based mostly on an agent. Where he makes statements like knowledge is that the agent’s belief is not essentially based on any false assumptions. Then he calls theses false assumptions the noessential-false-assumption account, or NEFA. Throughout the article he refers to NEFA a lot. He uses examples from other philosophers and shows how NEFA can refer to their situation. He then describes how everything has justification to it. He shows what this agent person (his secretary) uses as claims for justification. He says the reason why the agent has knowledge despite the causal role that the falsehood plays is that there is another proposition – the proposition that the secretary said that the appointment is on Monday – which meets three conditions: (1) it is also justified by the apparent memory (2) it is true, and (3) it justifies the belief. Because there is available to the agent a second proposition that meets these conditions even if the agent doesn’t explicitly believe the proposition. He then goes to say even if the person doesn’t believe these things it has to be true due to logic and the use of logos. And not everything can be proven using NEFA. After a long rant of useful information he sums up everything in a few sentences which comes down to: there is a plausible alternative account of knowledge which handles the cases appropriately and which thus demands further examination.


The 2nd article I am using is “nothing and Nihism”.  This whole article throw around the general idea that we should differentiate the nothing from that which is worthless (null) – by maintaining the idea that what is worthless is precisely that which has forgotten the nothing. When they talk about Nihism it means “nothing to reveal”. Then its talks about how nothingness is a way of life. It states how nothingness is not an ultimate end or beginning of Being but an event of an in-between. You can flounder around the thought of worthlessness but after searching and revealing yourself then you can come out of the dark and the not knowing. Then it goes to saying with you can turn language into a philosophy. And how they prove this is talking about death. Death is considered a blind spot in philosophy. They say death is supposed to be exterior to the individual so other people can see death in someone else. Death can also be compared to a black hole; once you cross it no information can be found. Therefore, the event of one's own death is comparable with that of nothing. The last part of the journal talks about the nothing in today’s sense. The grand question that most of us have already heard is “why is there something rather than nothing?” They also throw around other questions that make you think like “How is there nothing rather than something?” When you answer these questions you come up with the general idea of when nothingness unfolds in thought and writing, “Why is there ‘nothingness’ instead of   ?”.  It is a basic reminder of positive and negative.