Alterations in my Understanding (AKA Seminar aftermath (AKA Physics ruined my brain))

Before I start talking about any of the important/useful/factual stuff, I’d just like to say that that could have gone infinitely better – curse my inability to speak publically and crippling fear of being wrong. I think the fact that I haven’t slept in about 30 hours probably also didn’t help, nor did the ridiculous amount of coffees and sugar-based snack items I have consumed/been living off of in this time.

Things I should add:

·         Descartes refutes the ideas that other people might not exist as 1) God is good so would not allow us to be tricked by ‘the evil demon’ that others exist when they do not and 2) he had a strong intuition that they also existed.

·         Everything discussed is of a Continental Rationalism; the opposite of this is Anglo-Saxon Empiricism which we look at later.

·         Wax – observed by sense before and after it is burnt; perception of the wax changes so ideas from the senses cannot be relied upon, can only know that the wax takes up space (not available to the senses).

·         Things to think about: Can objects exist without observation/perception? And how can you possibly know?

·         Films that steal ideas from philosophy about the universe and existence: The Matrix, Inception, Men In Black (a little bit right at the end), The Grinch (again, a little bit, not really though)

·         Space is a concept of the mind; it does not exist

·         The universe is infinite and therefore has no direction – direction is added by you to help you try to understand/comprehend it

·         Time is not observable, only events

·         God exists in rational theory to, essentially, fill the gaps

·         Solipsism – where you believe only you exist as you can only know that you can think and that everyone and everything else is an illusion of some sort.

And:

·         Paradise is where you never stub your toe (or fall in a pot hole)

The issue I’m having with a lot of this, like objects not existing when unobserved or that space does not exist and the like, is that it goes against a lot of things I learnt in physics which is proving to be yet another reason that none of this makes sense. Okay, that’s not quite true; I get a lot (or at least a fair few bits) of it, and the idea that the universe is infinite is fairly easy for me to understand thanks to physics, but, still. I think I’m starting to sort of understand things a little bit more though. I hope.

Anyway, until next time!