StrivingLife

One of the most prevalent themes in the readings for this class has been religion, or mysticism, and its influence on and necessity for both man and society. The question that keeps arising is, however, can man and society live do without religion, or something similar? The modern man has more trust, for the most part, in science then he has in religion. However, what does this mean? First, I would like to take a look at what religion has done for man, in relation to the readings in general. Then, I would like to look at whether religion could be set aside, because science has fulfilled the role of religion. In other words, the question of whether society and man can live without religion will be the main focus.

Our first reading, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, was about a man, Victor Frankenstein, who overcame nature by creating a living being with the help of science. The religion of Victor's time held that it is God who created man, and it is only God that can create man. Therefore, in this novel we see the defeat of nature, and thus religion, by the hands of man and his science.

However, the story does not end with the being's creation. Victor finds himself disturbed by what he has created, and shuns it from his life. However, it later finds him and those that he loves, and ends up taking the lives of all those related to Victor, as well as it's own life. In this way, one could argue that nature has set itself right, as anything unnatural only brings about it's own destruction. One could also argue that science cannot create anything as perfect to, that will last as long as, nature.

Our second reading was Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. This novel was about a modern man, a scientific man, traveling back to the time of knights, a world that was medieval and relied upon religion and mysticism. The main theme of this novel is whether science can give to the world something that religion cannot.

After traveling back, it is true that our main character creates a better place. He brings many advancements to the area, such as knowledge about the world and how it works. In this way, he attempts to dispel many of the 'unknowns' in the world, and because of that, the reliance upon magic and the supernatural. However, even though he is able to dispel many of the previous, unscientific, beliefs, many remain. There is still much that science has not provided the answers to, as well as the fact that science does not make the medieval world a better place. Near the end, our main character uses scientific knowledge to bring about the unnatural deaths of many people. Not only that, but magic is able to put our main character to sleep, for many lifetimes, so that he can spread no more 'progress.'

We see then that even this novel attempts to show that science doesn't have all the answers. Science just attempts to take the place of religion, by explaining the previously unexplained. However, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court doesn't show religion as the answer either, as religion attempts to belittle anything that challenges it, even if it may be the truth. So, it could be inferred that Twain argues that neither science nor religion could provide the best solutions for how to live our lives, at present.

Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, our third reading, is about a character who believes that men are either mice, like himself, or bulls, like those that he despises. This is more of a novel against progress, or at least against the alienation of human beings from each other, then one about science and religion specifically. However, religion, perhaps more so mysticism, is typically more individual based then science is. Religion is something that people can look to for answers, answers which are oftentimes congruent with their intuitions and beliefs than the discoveries of science. Science strives towards the truth, and doesn't care so much what it means to previously held beliefs.

For example, science begins to learn more about human beings, and why they act the way that they do. Also, science attempts to show why there is no God who watches over everyone and helps them out when they are in trouble. Religion, then, has this benefit, as it gives a certain amount of confidence to people. If someone believes that somebody is watching out for them, then they will believe that they have a purpose. Also, religion strives towards community, as people with similar beliefs are drawn to each other. Individuals must try to form together in order to overcome obstacles that they face, while science does not stress this quite as much.

We see how religion brings about a sense of community, more, in Harris' Lourdes, which was the fourth book that we read in this class. Harris discusses the religious phenomena of Lourdes, in order to get some idea into why it attracted people as it did. Lourdes is about the effect that religion can have on people. Reading it, one might believe, as many do, that it was merely hysteria that led the pilgrims to go to Lourdes, to act the way that they did, and to believe what they did. It is apparent, then, as it has been in the other readings, that religion is a powerful force, that is able to move people in mysterious ways.

However, religion is not completely good. The conditions - the filth - that many of the people resided in, along with the misuse of the situation by those in power, combined to give religion a somewhat negative taint at Lourdes. Those enjoying the healing properties of Lourdes go against what modern science has told them to do - namely to stay away from unclean water and places to disease.

From our readings, it is clear that the ongoing conflict between the roles of science and religion in society is a difficult one to solve. Both science and religion have positive and negative attributes, as is seen from our readings. I think that the conclusion to draw from this must be that science has not replaced religion for mankind; they both exist, often in contradiction to each other. Only time will tell whether further scientific advancements will hold in them the comfort that religion has offered mankind for years.

Notes

Created: November 27th 2002
Modified: February 13th 2004; October 17th 2004
See also my papers tiled: Dostoevsky’s Underground Man as the Creation of Society; The Increase of the Power of Man and Science as the Main Theme of the Nineteenth Century; Man’s Quest for Dominance over Nature within Frankenstein.

For my paper, I was going to attempt to answer what justice is. Obviously, Plato's Republic will be of use for this topic. Particularly his discussion with others, as well as how he thinks the state should be setup.

I'm not going to put any of Machiavelli's The Prince in my paper, because I wasn't too much of a fan of him, and he doesn't really go into what justice 'really' is.

Hobbes would be a good person to discuss, in relation to the contract and such. Also, Locke would be good to discuss as well, since, in my opinion, Hobbes and Locke are pretty closely related (in what they talk about, not what they prescribe to).

I like Kant, and think that what he says will be relevant to the paper. However, depending on how much the others take, I might not include Kant, but I'm leaning towards including him.

I was not planning on including Hegel, nor Marx. I wasn't going to include Hegel because I have problems with his theory. I wasn't planning on using Marx because it's more about the revolution of the working classes - the complete overthrow of the current system with no middle ground - then about what is just. Foucault and Nussbaum were probably not going to be included either, because we haven't gotten to them yet - and I had never heard of them before this class - and I'd like to have a firm grasp on them before I started writing on them.

So, that's what I was planning. I see justice and rights going pretty much hand in hand, so, I was planning on discussing rights and how it worked in.

Notes

Created: November 27th 2002
Modified: February 13th 2004

Recently, while listening to a philosophical discussion, I came to hear that there were not two kinds of inference (deductive and inductive), as I thought before, but instead that there were three kinds; deductive, inductive, and abductive. Wanting to know more about abductive reasoning, I did a little search, finding the following information.

First, let's show deduction, by way of an example:

Or, in other words, deductive arguments can be shown from their premises. We are first given a rule (the first premise), as well as a case (the second premise), and are then able to conclude with a result. So:

Deductive reasoning is, by far, the safest way to make a conclusion, as opposed to inductive and especially abductive reasoning. Notice that we could switch around number two (the second premise) and number three (the conclusion), removing the “(the Dr. Pepper can)”, and still have three true statements. However, the new number three in such a case would not follow from number 1 and the new number 2. Since I admit that my wording of this case is poor, let us see what I mean.

Coca-Cola cans also have white and red on their surface, meaning that it’s possible that I have a Coca-Cola can in my hand. Even though I haven’t pointed this fact out (that Coca-Cola cans are white and red on their surface as well), that doesn’t mean that we can’t come up with an example that could be another possible conclusion. We’ll see a bit more of this later, when we move into the other kinds of logical inference.

Another point to bring up about deduction is that it can be used as reductive reasoning. Reduction is taking a premise and simplifying it. Some would have us believe that this is not the same as deduction (see Logic and Rhetoric, by James William Johnson, for example), but I’d like to hold that it is. Deduction doesn’t necessarily have to be based upon two premises. Rather, it could be that one of the premises is fairly intensive, or full. For example,

In most modern logic, we would have to break this single premise, which could be a sentence in real life, into four different premises, each dealing with a different cat. While these are typically restated as premises in modern logic (see #8, Simplification, in the above mentioned Rules for Sentential Logic), it could be possible that we wish to end there, calling it a conclusion instead. For example, if I were to ask you, after telling you the above premise, what colour Sophie is, I wouldn’t expect you to restate the entire premise. Instead, I would expect you to tell me “Sophie is black, white, brown, and a bunch of other things” – any other information, such as information about Murray, Henry, or Tux, would be unnecessary, and would only show that you can repeat information, not deduce information from statements.

The rules of deductive reasoning can be found in most logic books, and a list is contained in my paper mentioned above: Rules for Sentential Logic.

Inductive reasoning works with a case and a result, to determine a rule. For example,

While the sun may not rise tomorrow (it may go supernova or the earth may break apart) we have a good reason to believe that it will rise.

Deductive and inductive reasoning are also discussed by Monroe C. Beardsley, in Practical Logic. He states that deductive and inductive arguments each have two parts. The following is an idea of what he discusses in this book (page 201 of the 16th printing).

• Deductive argument argues that
  • the reason is a set of one or more premises
  • the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises
• Inductive argument argues that
  • the reason is a set of one or more statements called the evidence
  • the evidence sufficiently shows that the conclusion is more likely to be true then false

For the inductive argument, we saw that the evidence certainly points towards a scenario where the conclusion is true (namely that the sun will rise again, since it has every other time we have examined it). Of course, we can easily come up with a scenario where the evidence points to something that is not true, as I pointed out above. As Edmund Husserl states in his Logical Investigations, “Induction does not establish the holding of the law, only the greater or lesser probability of its holding; the probability, and not the law, is justified by insight.” [pg 47, Volume 1]

Abductive reasoning takes the final combination of; result, rule, case. So, we then get that abductive reasoning uses a result and a rule to get a case. Charles Peirce is attributed with the use of this reasoning. What this mainly states is that we observe some case/event A. If some rule R were true, then A would be an example of that rule in action (in other words, R would explain A). Therefore, we have seen that it is possible that R may be true, as we have observed A. I'll explain this by use of an example,

Or, a better example, moving the 'given' and 'and a' around (so that it is "Given a Rule and a Result"):

Of course, it's also possible that my car was towed, that somebody I know (and have given my keys to) has moved my car, or a flash flood has ripped through the area and moved my car ;) Abductive reasoning isn’t as scientifically sound as inductive and deductive reasoning are, for this very reason – we can come to multiple conclusions based upon which rule we decide to apply, as long as the rule has some relevance to the case or event that we are attempting to explain.

To put the three together then, we have the following table:

As I've seen put elsewhere, deductive reasoning applies previous knowledge to new cases. On the other hand, induction and abduction is used to acquire new knowledge.

Hopefully this makes sense, but I'm always open to suggestions and comments on my pieces if it does not.

Notes

Created: November 20th 2002
Modified: February 6th 2003; October 24th 2003; February 9th 2004; August 6th 2004; August 16th 2004; September 23rd 2004; November 7th 2004

My previous knowledge in the field of logic was obtained in an undergraduate course, Elementary Logic. You can find some of the information that I learned in that class, in my paper titled Rules for Sentential Logic.