"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

Friday, September 4, 2009

Homework


PLEASE CHANGE YOUR OLD BOOKMARK TO THIS LINK!

Now that I've got your attention...

My original idea of using this post as a permanent homework link didn't pan out so well. It just got too messy keeping up with the new batches of comments every day. So, here's the new plan: simply go to the main blog site (http://mountiesphilosophy.blogspot.com/) for the daily homework. It will always be visible as the most recent post (i.e., the post at the top of the page).

27 comments:

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  8. "Life on Earth evolved over billions of years as a result of adaptive mutations and genetic recombinations." Some people believe this is true. They also belive they have scientific evidence that supports their theory. Other people think that God created all the life on Earth a couple million years ago (or a couple thousand?).

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  9. "Drugs are bad." Some people believe that all drugs (including pharmacuticals) are detriental to a persons health no matter what the circumstances. Others say that drugs of any kind, if used in moderaion, can have many benifits with few side effects.

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  10. "Smoking is bad." As a person who is looking at the evidence. Lung cancer, Gum dessie, Yellow teeth, smoking kills you. You'd definatly agree it is bad. But being the smoker or person selling the cigerettes you feel it benifits you. You could argue as it calms you, and not everyone dies from cigerettes or gets harm done to their body.

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  11. "Once you turn 16, you can drive." To the person supporting this fact, the argument would be that once you turn 16, you have the opportunity to drive in Massachusetts. The person arguing against this fact could say that you first need to obtain a permit and learn to drive. It's really all about the wording.

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  12. "Prostitution is bad" As a many people think that it goes against there morals and or religions. Some people think that this act should be punished by the death penalty . Other think prostitution is good because it might be there most talented skill and can be used to there advantage of making easy money.

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  13. "No taxation without representation." One of the major causes of the revolutionary war were the taxes levied by the British to supplement the Seven Year's War. The Americans believed that as citizens of the British empire they should not be taxed without any seats in Parliament. The British, however, thought the Americans should assist in paying for the war started on their continent. There was also the muddled view of what a British citizen actually was. Were the colonists who had never even been to the Motherland actually citizens?

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  14. "War is destructive" Many people argue that war is pointless and destructive, but an argument could be made against that view with the thought that war's final constructiveness outweighs it's disadvantages. Computers were invented as war machines to crunch numbers for artillery and missile trajectories. Radar was also invented for war. These advances and many others would have taken much longer to discover if not for war, and they may not have even been discovered at all. Imagine your world without your computer and your cell phone, war is mostly responsible for the technology in both of those devices.

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  15. "Smoking pot is bad for you" In many ways this statement can be true and false. While it can have negative effects on the every day person, it can control the constant vomiting of a person under going chemo.

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  16. Dan Phelps argued with me:
    a3tard (9:41:07 PM): a lot of things cause lung cancer, how can one prove that smoking causes it more than other habits
    xhugglexfairyx (9:41:35 PM): its more prominate in smokers
    a3tard (9:42:13 PM): also a tip, value statements like bad/good, dont make good fact material
    a3tard (9:42:31 PM): i could argue that without tobacco there wouldnt be any american colonies
    a3tard (9:42:58 PM): and you wouldnt enjoy the privelige of philosophy with dr p.

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  17. "God made dinosaur fossils to test our faith" The bible never once mentions dinosaurs, and according to the bible the Earth is around six thousand years old. On the other hand evidence suggests that birds and reptiles evolved from dinosaurs which would require their existance.

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  18. "Drinking alcohol is bad" Some say that it is refreshing and enjoyable but on the other hand it is dangerous when abused in certian conditions.

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  19. "humans evolved from primated" a so called fact from the scientific point of view with scientific evidence and facts but then religion comes into play. religion says humans were created by God. a argument going on for a while beween two huge sides in the world today.

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  20. "Jesus is the messiah" People of the Cristian faith believe this to be the truth. Certain other religions view Jesus as a prophet, but not as the messiah. Some people argue he was merely a man in history claiming to be the son of god.

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  21. "grass is green" almost anyone will say grass is green if you ask them what color it is, but really, grass isnt green, its just constructed so that when light bounces off of it it appears green to the human eye.

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  22. "I am standing still."

    While it feels to me and anyone in the room that I am in fact not moving, anyone in a car going 50mph outside of this building could easily say that I am traveling very fast in the opposite direction. Likewise, anyone traveling in a rocket ship which is not in orbit around the sun could rightly say that I am moving very fast with the earth around the sun, and even that that's moving relative to the galaxy, which is moving relative to other galaxies and so on.

    Something that's interesting that I noticed: Most of these comments have the words "good" or "bad" in them, and I'm wondering if anyone can call a phrase stated with such ambiguous words facts, or if they are more accurately opinions. I think we need to define "bad" and "good".

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  23. "Buildings don't move."

    It is a fact that buildings don't just grow leggs and scurry away. Although, the earth rotates and revolves around the sun, so in a way, a building will move from a different location in space.

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  24. "Objects crashing into each other make a noise."

    When someone sees a baseball streaking towards a glass window, the expected result is a shattering noise. And for people who witness the contact, that seems to be the resulting noise. However, maybe people just have this preconceived notion that the they will hear the sound of glass shattering, and therefore make themselves believe that they heard it, when in reality there is a completely different sound, or even no sound at all.

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  25. Swift, Apollosbane - both on the same track RE: the relative nature of even straightforward physical observations. Nice. (And yes, the use of value-words like 'good' and 'bad' muddies the issue. We touched on that in class, but it's nowhere near resolved yet. :-) Charlie - you sound like a philosopher called David Hume, who used the example of billiard balls to illustrate that our usual ideas about cause-and-effect might be, as you say, merely assumptions.

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  26. "axe doesn't atract weman"
    i think this is true becuase it the guy who atracts the weman, but the scent helps sometimes

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