Morality in the Media

I think in todays media there has been a decrease in morality. So many tv shows have terrible ethics. For example, take all the dating shows. The Bachelor,  Flavor of Love, Tila Teqila....the list goes on forever.. but what kind of moral agenda do these shows have. The Bachelor and all of these shows have a group of about twenty or so men and/or women who are all swooning over one supposedly amazing person. Within in a week, all of the "datees" are in love with this "Bachelor" and the "Bachelor" proceeds to lead every single one of them on in hopes that they are "the one." What kind of message does this send out about true love and the treatment of other human beings? I know there are other shows out there that put an emphasis on doing the right thing, but their arent many shows like that anymore. 

philosophizing?

I was thinking about what we talked about in class a little while ago that was essentially about how much money it would take to kill an innocent person, and i remembered that some poeple were saying that even if they needed that money to save their dying mother, they still wouldn't do it. I find that hard to believe though..I think everyone has their price, whether it be money or not. What if their were threats put on your or your family. I think that could change a lot. Though i still don't think i could ever kill an innocent person, I would have to at least consider it if my family's life was put on the line.

Today In Class

Today in class we talked about professor Mazoue's question of how much money it would take to hit a button and end someone's life that he had kidnapped. This would be a completely innocent person, and we had the option of erasing this memory. Some people were able to name a price on how much money it would take for them to press a button. I'm not sure if i could actually do it though. I don't think any amount of money would convince me to kill someone innocent. Just because I won't remember that i killed them doesn't mean that they weren't killed. 

MInd?

Everyone has heard the phrase "it has a mind of its own" People say this in reference to many things, whether they are a live, without a brain, or with a brain. I was thinking about this, and if is something that isn't physical, then we have no way of proving whether an object has a brain or not. So really, anything can have a mind. I believe that in order to have a mind, you must be living, but i wouldn't say that in order to have a mind you have to have a brain. if that makes any sense what so ever......

fourth post

something that really caught my attention was from the reading from our textbook

"Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine:Philosophy and The Matrix"

Descartes talking about dreaming: "How often, asleep at night, am i convinced of just such familiar events-that i am here in my  dressing gown, sitting by the fire-when i am in fact lying undressed in bed!....as i stretch out and feel my hand i do so deliverately, and i know what i am doing. All this would not happen with such distinctness to someone asleep!...As i think more carefully, I see plainly that there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep."

This makes a lot of sense, and it makes me think about the pinch test where you pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming, but isnt pinching possible in dreams? We really have no sure way of telling that we're awake. We believe we are, but who is to say we're not all dreaming right now?

Post 3

There was a philosophical question that i heard about, and while searching for an attachment to post i found this quote:

"Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogma's and one's axioms."

This quote really kinda deals with what we've been talking about, especially skepticism. You have to be able to question others, and even question your current beliefs in order to correctly understand the "truth."

Second Post

Something that really entertained me in the assignments this week was Naomi Klein's idea of The Shock Doctrine. I found her theory very believable and i can definitely see how different policies can be implemented in times of shock, but would never be accepted in "normal" times.  I found it hard to believe that this was the first i've heard about disaster capitalism even though it goes on all the time, not just in america. I don't know if anyone else watched the short film on the shock doctrine, but some of the images were kind of scary and made me realize how dangerous this method of changing a government could/can be. Who  knows what we could get tricked into believing?