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“Conversely, the theologians say that the will of God alone decides that he does everything, everything, and directs the man to his will has to add, to God, man is powerless and without will.”

Both are wrong. God and man, although opposite, they are extremes, but extremes that touch each other and the need to act in concert with each other in order to satisfy each other. God wants man to help him, in a sense be Assozié was. But in order to provide this help, one must study the laws of nature, man and the laws of attraction. Once he understands this, he is able to operate upon together with God. The feeling that unites both supposed to be friendly, not disregard, as the philosophers teach, preach, and not blind, humble submission, as the theologians. In the one case as in the other, neither God nor man can be happy and they do not achieve their purpose.

Are we dissatisfied with life?  I remember graduation from eighth grade and having all these big plans what I was going to do with life.   I was going to be this famous model and write a book about the exciting life that I was going to live.  In my eighth grade, I stood about six feet two and weigh about one hundred seventy five pounds. 

No way was this lady going to be a model, so I settled for second best.  I never tried to lose weight and go to college to become a famous model.  Never had the drive inside myself to do that with myself and, so my dreams were pushed into the background. 

Was I dissatisfied with life?  I never really thought about it until recently.  We had the usual married life with three children and money problems up to the hill.  Did I try to improve our situation or did I just sit there and complained?  You guessed it; I sat there and took whatever life had to hand to me.

This was not much because I have had five or six different jobs and there was something wrong with each one.  I complained that I was bored doing them, never got enough money, and never like the work since it was, so hard to do. 

I loved the man I married and we had several arguments before he passed away in 1996 of diabetics.  I was left as a single mothers with three children and I was scared to death of being alone and responsible for three children.  They are grown now and they still live with me or should I say we all live together in one side of a duplex.

What did I want out of life?  I wanted a man to take care of me and friends to have in my life, so that I could share my life with them.  I could share my life with them and they could share their life with me. You know friends always have your back.

I am dissatisfied that I never did what God wanted me to do with my life and that was to be a famous writer.  God had plans for me to write books that would stir people in his direction and they would start to follow His Way of life. 

Is it too late for me to start?  I am still breathing, so I am going to write a book about love and lies that turn this one little lady into following God.  She did something with her life when she became dissatisfied with her life.  She changed her life for the better and she started to live the life that God had planned for her.

Are you dissatisfied with your life?  Are you going to change your life or leave it like it is?  Are you going to follow God’s Way for your life?

Ludwig Wittgenstein is believed by many to be one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers. It is rather ironic then that he is probably more widely remembered for waving a poker at Karl Popper in order too make his point and then abruptly leaving. It is clear that he was an intense and compelling personality.

Life 

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna on the 26th of April 1889 into the large and wealthy Wittgenstein family. His father Karl Wittgenstein was one of the most successful businessmen in the Iron and Steel and enjoyed a position of some prominence within Viennese society at the time. Though wealthy, home life was far from easy for the young Wittgenstein, being the youngest of eight children with three of his four brothers committing suicide. 

He also enjoyed a rather unorthodox formal education, he did not attend school until the age of 14 and then he was not particularly successful. Wittgenstein failed in his ambition to read Physics at University and it was then assumed that he would become an engineer like his father having shown some aptitude in this direction. Ludwig first went too study mechanical engineering at Berlin and then moved onto Manchester where he undertook research in aeronautics. It was at Manchester that he became interested in Philosophy, having read and been impressed by Bertrand Russell’s Principles of Mathematics. In 1912 on the advice of Frege, he went to Cambridge to study with Russell. 

He stayed at Cambridge for a relatively short period of time, though it was clear he was a brilliant thinker, he instead opted to travel. This was interrupted by the First World War in 1914 which saw Wittgenstein immediately sign up to the Austrian Army where he served on the eastern front winning several medals for bravery. It was also during this time that he began work on the manuscript of the book which became the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 

Philosophy 

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was eventually published in 1922 with the help of his mentor Russell. This is Ludwig Wittgenstein major work of his early period and its decidedly a young mans work. The Tractatus was only 70 pages long which essentially elaborated seven propositions. 

Some of the important representative propositions are these: 

1 The world is all that is the case.

1.2 The world divides into facts. 

1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.

4.01 A proposition is a picture of reality.

4.0312 …My fundamental idea is that the ‘logical constants’ are not representatives; that there can be no representatives of the logic of facts.

4.121 …Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it.

4.1212 What can be shown, cannot be said.

4.5 …The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand.

5.43 …all the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit nothing.

5.4711 To give the essence of a proposition means to give the essence of all description, and thus the essence of the world.

5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. 

7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Being a logical and mathematical kind of guy, the book consists of numbered propositions. For example proposition 1.2 belongs to the first set and is a comment on proposition 1. With 1.21 is about proposition 1.2, and so on. 

The book set out what is known as the picture theory of meaning. The world consists of a set of atomic facts. Propositions such as the ‘Cat Is Black’ are logical pictures of the actual world or they present possible facts. In other words propositions stand for possible states of affair within the world. If the state of affair presented by the proposition obtains in the world then the proposition is true. It was Wittgenstein’s view that underlying logical structure of language therefore mirrors the logical structure of the world.

What is generally interesting in the Tractatus is Wittgenstein’s view that things can be said clearly or not at all ‘When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it.’ Language marks the limit of human thought, if it is not possible to say something clearly, it isn’t possible to think it without falling into nonsense. 

The young man that had written the Tractatus believed he had solved all possible Philosophical questions. Anything that cannot be stated in the way Wittgenstein demands, anything else is essentially poetry, religion or neurosis and is not too be taken seriously. Having felt he had solved all the problems of Philosophy he went back to Austria to become a schoolteacher where it was said that his methods where strict and unpopular but effective. 

He eventually gave up teaching and became a gardener at a monastery. He began to talk with some of the members of the Vienna Circle a group of logical positivists based in Vienna at the time, who placed reverence on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein evening mentioning him in there manifesto as one of the ‘”Leading representatives of the scientific world-conception”. 

It was around this time he began to feel some misgivings about the Tractatus and that it may have not solved all Philosophical problems after all. This reassessment lead the second phase of his Philosophical career, and his first major work after the publishing of the Tractatus. Philosophical Investigations was not completed when Wittgenstein died in 1951 and was published in 1953 too years after his death. 

In many respects the idea’s he developed in the Investigations were completely at odds to those displayed in his earlier philosophy. He came to believe that the idea of language being a determinate system, where propositions stand for states of affairs in the world, was fundamentally misconceived. Rather that meaning is inextricably tied to the behaviour of language users and the context that the language is employed. 

In Philosophical investigations says that “For a large class of cases–though not for all–in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” Though it is quite clear that he is not offering the theory that meaning is use. 

A rather unique approach is used in the Investigations with Wittgenstein having the reader work through various problems making the reader participate actively in the investigation, treating Philosophy as an activity rather than just theory. Wittgenstein asks the reader to come up with a definition for the word game, though this may seem a simple task. It quickly come’s apparent that there is no universal quality that all games share and that only game’s share, any definition which focuses on amusement leaves us unsatisfied since the feelings experienced by a world class chess player are very different from those of a circle of children playing Duck Duck Goose. Any definition which focuses on competition will fail to explain the game of catch, or the game of solitaire. And a definition of the word “game” which focuses on rules will fall on similar difficulties. 

What Wittgenstein shows us that that we don’t have a definition, and we don’t need one, because even without the definition, we use the word successfully, within the boundary’s of the language game that we are playing at that time. In one language game the word ‘game’ might mean one thing and in another it may mean another thing, but as long as everyone understands us we have no problem and if they don’t we can add an extra degree of clarity too the language game we are playing too the point that we all have a common understanding and the word can be successfully used.

He frees from us the Socratic demand for essential definition. In Meno we are asked for the definition of virtue ,Socrates points out that that Meno lists many particular virtues without defining a common feature inherent to virtues which makes them thus, but Wittgenstein would propose that what allows us to call them virtues is the fact that they share a family resemblance. In this analogy we are shown how we recognize a family due to the fact they share certain traits among one another though they may not be identically the same but they may have the shame jaw, nose, chin or hair. This helps us explain why we can consider Olympic Target shooting a game but we are extremely unlikely to consider military sharp shooting a game. 

In the Investigations Wittgenstein also ask the question whether it is possible for a private language to exist. To consider this possibility, he imagines a case where a person writes down ‘S’ in a diary whenever they experience a particular sensation. In this way it seems possible to arrive at a private definition of ‘S’ with it being possible to establish a permanent connection between ‘S’ and the sensation. However Wittgenstein establishes a crucial problem, in a private language there is no clear difference between remembering the correct application of a sign, and believing that one has remembered the correct application of a sign. Which means that the sign lacks meaning nothing can establish if it is being used correctly. It follows that a private language is not possible and that language gains its meaning from public context. 

It was Wittgenstein’s believe that the role of philosophy was to uncover the various ways that we are baffled and confused by language as he put it in Investigations philosophy ‘is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language’. He holds an interesting place in Philosophy maybe due to his lack of traditional Philosophical background and the fact he never felt the need to go back through the history of Philosophy and often told his students not to bother too. He has left a significant mark on philosophy with the Vienna Circle being very much impressed by the Tractatus which had great influence on them. The ordinary or Oxford school language are particularly indebted, with these thinkers being more interested in his later work and his attention too grammar. It is quite easy to understand how Bertrand Russell considered Wittgenstein to be perhaps the greatest intellect of his day.

Important other Works 

The Blue and Brown Books 

Published in 1958, several years after the death of Wittgenstein, these books originate from the mid 30’s. They were dictated by Wittgenstein to his students and constitute a useful introduction to the writings of his later period. 

On Certainty 

Also published after his death, this collection of writing’s on epistemology are taken from the last few year’s of Wittgenstein’s life and are primarily sourced from within his notebooks. 

Useful Resources

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/tloph10.txt 

For more philosophy introductions check out : Kant Touch This

An Introduction to Epicurus

Epicurus was a prominent ancient Greek philosopher from the Hellenistic period and was founder of the school of Philosophy known as Epicureanism.  It is thought that Epicurus was a very prolific writer but today only three letters and other fragments of his work remain.  One of the major sources for our knowledge about his Philosophy comes from three letters written by Epicurus which were preserved in Diogenes Laertius doxography of Ancient Philosophy. Much about Epicurus is also known from the works of followers and commentators, it is believed that a lot of his followers were quite conservative in regards to Philosophy and did not stray far from Epicurus’s original positions.

Life

Epicurus was born in 341 B.C into a noble Athenian family (As reported by Metrodorus in On Noble Families).  He was raised in Samos until the age of 18 when he left for Athens, but his stay was cut leaving Athens before the end of the year due to the death of Alexander (323) which led Athenians to be expelled from Samos. This led to him moving to what is now known as Turkey with his father and it was here that he studied under Democritean philosopher Nausiphanes, it is suggested that Nausiphanes acted as very significant influence to Epicurus during this time. In 307/306 (Disputed) Epicurus returned to Athens purchasing property and beginning to start develop his Philosophical school with great zeal. All evidence points to Epicurus being an individual with an extremely humane disposition testament to this was his commitment to making sure adequate provisions were made for all the children of his friends.

Philosophy and The happy life  

For Epicurus if knowledge did not make us happier it would be useless; the true task of Philosophy is to lead us to happiness. Obtaining knowledge of the natural world allows us to discern what goods and activities are best matched to our own nature. For the Epicureans pleasure was an end in itself  “pleasure is the principle and the end of the happy life” and was one of the features of Epicurean philosophy that received the most criticism many quick to denounce this hedonism which at first glance seems to give little concern to others , though it is important to note that Epicurus didn’t promote unbridled hedonism (as might be suggested by one modern use of the term ‘Epicurean’; to describe someone who enjoys fine dining) .  Pleasure in the Epicurean sense is absence from pain and from suffering of the soul as outlined in the letter to Menoeceus  “the health of the body and the absence of disturbance in the soul”.  . It is important that an individual exerts prudence, just because pleasure is good does entail that every pleasure should be pursued.  Privilege is given to pleasures that are in accordance with our nature and are necessary for happiness, with one of the greatest pleasure that one can experience is friendship with friendship acting not just something that maximises ones happiness but it is rather a necessary precondition for one to be able to live the happy life. Pleasures that can lead to harming others are to be avoided as this can lead to inner turmoil,  reproach and punishment which is contrary to the objective of a pleasurable life. 

For more Philosophy Introductions Check out Kant Touch This 

It has been said he was a brilliant but unoriginal thinker. One of the most important contributions he made was bringing the views of the Vienna Circle to the English Speaking world. It has been said that Ayer was also a great synthesiser of thought, which has led to him having a very important place in the history of 20th Century Philosophy. 

Life 

Born on the 29th October 1910 in the family flat in St John’s Wood, north London and had a rather solitary early life being an only child of not very assimilated parents who had moved to England before Ayer’s birth. 1917 he was sent to preparatory school in Eastbourne and through hard work managed to gain a classical scholarship to Eaton. This intense degree of specialization in Classics brought the reward of the top Classical Scholarship at Christ Church, Oxford. Ayer’s involvement in Philosophy seems to have come about for no particular reason serving no previous intellectual interest. It rather seemed to provide ideal material to for his powerfully argumentative intellect to work on. Though it can be seen he Philosophical interests where rather narrowly confined to the theory of Knowledge. Another great of 20th Century Philosophy Gilbert Ryle was very much responsible for Ayer’s development suggesting that he should read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and suggesting he should go to Vienna and study with Vienna Circle after completing degree rather than going to Cambridge and studying under Wittgenstein as he had planned. By the summer of 1933 work on his classic Language, Truth and Logic had started with the book being completed in 1935 and published the following year.

Language, Truth and Logic 

The main contentions laid out in Ayer’s most famous work are well known and no less controversial. By his own admission Language, Truth and Logic is ‘a young man’s book…written with more passion than most philosophers allow themselves to show’. 

The book starts of with a chapter entitled ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics’ this chapter provides a rejection of ‘the metaphysical thesis that Philosophy affords us knowledge of a reality that transcending the world of science and common sense’. Metaphysics is defined as ‘sentences that which express neither tautologies nor empirical hypothesis’ and are literally senseless or meaningless. For a statement to be genuine Ayer’s weak verification principle requires that ’some possible observations must be relevant to the determination of its truth or falsehood’. It may be asked as ‘How then are we to deal with the propositions of logic and mathematics?’ Such a priori propositions of logic & mathematics are necessarily true (or false) because of the linguistic conventions governing the terms which they occur in them and are devoid of any substantial content. 

This leads to Philosophy being a purely analytic undertaking supplying definitions not information about the transcendent. Philosophy does not provide explicit definitions but rather ’definitions in use’ He is keen to trace Philosophy’s analytic history ’most of those who are commonly thought to be great philosophers were Philosophers in our sense rather than metaphysicians’. So Locke, Berkeley & Hume become labeled as analysts.   

Following Frank Ramsey truth is simply how ‘the words true and false function in the sentence simply as assertion and negation signs’ thus for Ayer ‘the problem of truth is reduced to the question. How are propositions validated?’ Empirical propositions are not certain and are only held with a degree of probability with ‘hypothesis’ functioning ‘as rules which govern our expectation of future experience’.

Ethical judgements where divided into four categories ’first of all, propositions which express definitions of ethical terms…secondly, there are propositions describing the phenomena of moral experience and their causes… which must bust be assigned to the science of psychology or sociology… thirdly there are exhortations to moral value. And lastly there are actual ethical judgements’. Only the first category was considered to be proper moral philosophy. Due to the fact that both ‘exhortations to moral value’ and ‘actual ethical judgements’ did not meet the criteria of a meaningful statement this led to a kind of emotivism. Ayer reasoned that due to the fact moral judgements didn’t make genuine truth claims they must be expressions of feelings ‘Theft is wrong’ functions as an exclamation like ‘Down with theft’ so moral judgments are just expressions of an individuals feelings. Something similar is said of Theology, ‘There is a God’ is neither analytic or empirical but may express an individuals feelings about life. 

Of course there are significant problems with Ayer’s view. One of the most significant objections that can be raised against the verification principle that it is self-defeating it is neither analytically true nor can it be empirically verified. Logical Positivism had a huge influence on Philosophy within the 20th Century and Ayer‘s Language, Truth and Logic. In a interview later in his life when asked what was the main defect of the movement, he answered ‘Well I suppose the main defect was that nearly all of it was false’. But Language, Truth and Logic was nowhere near the end of the road for Ayer who went on to publish a number of important books mostly linked to the Theory of Knowledge.

Useful Resources A More Complete Introduction can be found at: Kant Touch This Standford Enclyopedia: Ayer

 These narcissistic girls are everywhere to be found in today’s society. Their main object in life is to give the illusion of perfect beauty and then snagging a similar shallow male counterpart who can provide them with riches to fulfill their wishes. All they care about are the latest fashions and rich eligible bachelors. Anything more which would require actual care towards a person is produces too much effort on their obtuse brains. In their search for materialism, which provides no deep meaning in life,  they forget that beauty runs skin deep.  The more  virtuous a person is , the more impact of beauty they have. They disregard this principle, thinking that  their mirage of  superficial pulchritude would suffice.  However, life is measured not by your riches, it is measured by those poignant moments when people touch each other’s life in a spiritual  or affectionate manner.  I think that these females should be pitied because they would never know the true meaning of life.

  Sometimes fate plays its hand and they get what they deserve.  Then  a few see the errors of their way and change their vain mindsets but most of the times they  play on other’s sympathy and  keep dictating the lives of those close to them. They are  nothing more than mere bullies who thrust their insecurities on others.  They are the  envious rivals of every  virtue and the savage contrivers of  moralists.  They are nothing less than sadists who  adore  tearing down others’ confidence to provide themselves amusement or  to swallow down their own insecurities and boost their self- worth.   For the sake of their souls, we can only hope that karma retaliates and gives them a taste of their own medicine,  and they look beyond their vanity and arrogance and leave thoughts of self-obsession  and conceitedness.  That they final burst from their egotistical bubble and  awaken their over-indulged brains to the stark reality of human suffering and rejoice in the joys of philanthropy.

‘What makes an issue ethical?’ Most young readers would not be able to answer this question. But before answering this question, a better question is ‘what is ethical?’ Ethics is a set of unwritten rules of moral behaviour and values within communities. This means that these set of ‘rules’ determine whether you are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. An ethical issue is an issue where there is conflict on what a certain person or organization is doing. The actions of the person or organization are evaluated as either right (ethical) or wrong (unethical). There are multiple approaches to avoid all conflict so that no issue arises.  A main consideration is Utilitarianism in which you consider the usefulness of a decision before making it so that it pleases most others. In other words, think before you act. When wanting to seek revenge on someone, it is best to think before you act before something worse happens. An ethical approach would be to forgive the person.

Subjectivism is also a key factor in avoiding conflict, but can also be brought out incorrectly depending on the person’s thoughts. Subjectivism is deciding by your own self-esteem and for yourself, through your own experiences, whether your actions are right or wrong. Deciding for yourself can sometimes be an incorrect decision because some people are unable to tell right from wrong due to their own experiences in life. An example of correct usage of subjectivism would be a person seeing a fight and stopping it rather than cheering it on with other bystanders. Situational ethics is making a decision in terms of the situation. With this approach, the actions seem unethical but the situation that they are placed in makes it ethical. For example, Breaking a window, to escape a fire or assaulting a stranger, in self defence. Without the specified situations, the actions are deemed unethical. A problem with relativism is that it asserts each person has the right to choose what is right or wrong that they can’t adopt themselves.

Relativism is a person’s ‘truth’ which is actually a belief. An example of relativism is hitting a person back because you believe it is the right thing to do. The opposite of relativism is Natural Law in which we believe that every person has an innate behaviour and are born a raised with a correct understanding of human morals. The Catholic Church believes that the Natural Law was adopted from the 10 commandments and without the Commandments, there would be no innate behaviour of ethics because there would be no guide for the first few people to live. The Catholic Church also believes that the ‘innate’ understanding of ethics is God’s creation. In my opinion, I believe that natural law is correct and that we are all born with some understanding of ethical and unethical situations but sometimes it can be personal experiences that make up your mind.

In a pluralist society, it would be complex to make ethical decisions because the society is diverse and what seems normal to some could be very different to others. A pluralistic society is a society which the community are able to legally choose their own ethical views and what ethical beliefs, if any, they wish to hold. It is similar to relativism in a sense that people are able to have their own ethical views but it is different in a sense that the society is allowed to have their own ethical views and few/no laws stopping them. The complexity of this would be that there would be little to no restriction to most people and it could potentially create chaos and possibly continue to the extinction of the human race. An example of this would be choosing to be homosexual rather than heterosexual; the human race would die out in one generation. In a religious point of view, every person has the choice of which religion they wish to believe in and the ethical views that come with it. It would be complex to make ethical decisions because there would be no correct right or wrong, only an opinion of every single person in the society. Although it seems like freedom, the world needs boundaries to survive. To some people murder would be seem as unethical but to others it could possibly be seen as ethical. Seeing murder as ethical is wrong in our society, but in a pluralistic society where everyone has their own choice, the people can choose to think that it is right. Within a Pluralistic society, human rights, responsibilities of individuals and groups of society would be different for nearly every person and wouldn’t even be considered with the same importance that it has today. If there was to be a Pluralist Society, the matter of life or death would be put into the hands of every human being.

The 10 Commandments started of as basic rules for relating to God and to others, but it has gained a greater importance throughout the years. Most of the rules within the 10 Commandments are used for human rights rules and approaches to ethical decision making. It is possible to say that the human race would have eventually arrived at these rules after some time, but with the influence of the 10 Commandments, it sped up the process. I do believe that we would have arrived to the rules eventually to create peace and harmony without the 10 Commandments (even though it would take longer). The 10 Commandments were first created to ‘obey’ God and to keep his creations safe. Most people believed in God and therefore followed the ‘rules’. But the people that didn’t believe in God, they still followed the ‘rules’ because they deemed it to be ethical. If they did not believe in God, why did they still follow ‘God’s rules’? It is because they already had an understanding of peace but had not perfected on how to bring it out, and still in our society today, we still don’t have a solution on how to create ‘world peace’. To create these rules, it would take time and experience throughout your life but it is fair enough to say that the 10 Commandments did help out in solving bits and pieces.

What to do when feeling lazy to write a part that should be avoided in life.

Lazy emerged as a problem that is difficult to control, even in doing something complicated, due to appear lazy attitude as a challenge.

If it appears lazy in doing the paperwork, you should do something else, such as giving awards “like” in an article, or to give a little comment, so that stimulation is able to beat lazy writing.

The desire to write high, but feeling lazy about the same level of population in the soul, then this is very challenging.

This condition requires a calm, relaxed and comfortable atmosphere, so that lazy attitude can be defeated.

Strive mind to correct the positive, negative and defeating thoughts in the brain.