Constructing an Account of an Argument In the article "Against School" (2003)‚ John Taylor Gatto debates that mandatory school is not educating our children but instead the schools are teaching them how to be manageable. He supports his claim by giving us personal accounts of what he has seen‚ examples of people who have been successful in life whom were not subject to the school system‚ and he also gives us text from other authors who support his views. Gatto’s purpose is to inform his readers
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Life Thomas Nagel is a highly intelligent and well-respected American philosopher who wrote the short (10 chapters) introduction to philosophy‚ “What does it All Mean?” While reading this intriguing brief introduction to philosophy‚ I couldn’t help but notice how Nagel discusses a variety of thought-provoking questions and theories/ideas regarding how he believes life really is and/or how it is portrayed. For instance‚ in the chapter titled‚ “How Do We Know Anything” Thomas Nagel argues that the
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his essay‚ “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”‚ Thomas Nagel argues against reductionism through examples of human subjectivity. Thomas Nagel argues through the subjectivity of human life and uniqueness of human experiences that the reductionist mind-body problem is false or at least unknowable at this point in time. Nagel introduces the essential problem of the reductionists as an inability to grasp the meaning of consciousness in an organism. Nagel argues that “fundamentally an organism has conscious
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Collaborative Nursing Degree Program Sexual perversions are difficult to define because sexual desire is a subjective experience. Nagel (1969) explains that understanding sexual desire is the prerequisite to understanding sexual perversions. According to Nagel‚ attraction leads to sexual desire when one finds a desirable characteristic in another. As such‚ Nagel explains that people are attracted to people‚ not features; therefore‚ transferring a feature from one individual to another leads to
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The concern Nagel is bringing up early in his book is the problem of the existence of an External World. The problem simply states that the world outside of our mind does not exist and we are living in a dream from which we cannot wake up. As humans we are innately curious and that I one of the reasons that we why question the existence of an External World‚ simply because we are inquisitive beings. However there is a deeper reasoning. We take a lot of concepts from granted in our world. All of our
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Does free will exist? Its our destiny predetermines? Do we have a choice? Did we ever have a choice? According to Thomas nagel on his book “what does it all mean?” There is a specific chapter dedicated to “Free will” in which nagel himself lays out a situation about the choice of a peach and a chocolate cake piece. He’s describing the situation and the dilemma between both choices. despite the fact that you thought you had a choice‚ that you could have the peach if you want but you made the decision
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faces of their captors after just one capture. Thomas Nagel looked into the phenomenology of animals as well‚ more specifically‚ into that of bats. He believed that “the essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat” (Nagel‚ 1974). What he is saying here is that for an animal to have consciousness‚ they should have the ability to see the world and experience it as no other could. Nagel goes on to say that “if the facts of experience‚ facts
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Nagel and Epicurus have conflicting views on whether to fear death or not. Although Nagel and Epicurus agree that life is good they have three main arguments in which their view upon death differs which are: “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”‚ “who suffers?” and asymmetry”. This paper will focus on those three reasons and explain both philosopher’s views. The first argument the philosopher’s opinion contrast in is “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. Epicurus believes in egotistic hedonism which
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for the cult of ethnicity. In theory political correctness sounds like a very reasonable idea and when looked at very shallowly this remains the case. When it is more thoroughly looked at thought it dangers become more and more apparent. By creating a set of “correct” terminology and assigning each ethnic background a name that separates them from the main culture of America we run the risk of further exaggerating the potentially volatile situation created by the cult of ethnicity in the country today
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Was Othello of African or Arabic descent? In the famous play Othello by William Shakespeare the topic of Othello’s ethnicity is a very widely discussed topic. Most people get to the‚ in my opinion‚ erroneous conclusion that Othello was of sub-Sahara African descent (black). The opposing point of view’s position is that he was of Arabic‚ or North African descent‚ which as I will attempt to explain throughout this paper is‚ in my opinion‚ correct. The main points people who believe that he was
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