Answering A Question

CAN GHOSTS EXIST?

Have you ever had the feeling of being watched, but when you looked nothing was there? That could have been a ghost. First thing to think about what is a ghost? On page 1 of Greg Janzen’s abstract it states that a ghost is simply defined as “a mind without a body.” Ghosts by this definition encompass many stories and hauntings.  But many people claim to have seen a ghost. How can that be possible if it has no body? Well people may also claim that it’s the presence of the ghost that is haunting them. That seems more logical by this definition. Ghosts have never really been proven by science. Sure there are many television shows that claim to find real ghosts, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s lied to people through the TV. Ghosts can be more easily disproven than proven. Science can show that ghosts couldn’t possibly exist and that is maybe just a figment of people’s imagination.

Firstly, imagining oneself as a ghost is near to impossible. If you try to imagine oneself as a “bodily surrogate” (Smart p. 133) which is  an invisible being that appears to people as a puff of smoke. But to imagine oneself as a bodily surrogate is not to imagine a ghost.  To imagine a ghost is impossible according to Janzen’s abstract. “…in fact, it’s impossible. Imagining oneself as a ghost involves imagining oneself as a pure subject or experience, a being with only fundamental property: a specific mode of consciousness.” (Janzen pg 95). So according to this a ghost is a certain “mode of consciousness,” this means that one would have to imagine looking at something and see it from no perspective. Since ghosts are said to be an creature without an body, there for it would not be embodied. So by Janzen’s argument, he states that a “first-personal view from nowhere – that much seems all but tautological – and a view from somewhere is an embodied view:” (Janzen p. 95).

Secondly, to go along with ghosts not being embodied and therefore cannot be conscious. What if people argue for the disembodied ghost? That brings up the issue of space.  Really this is a case of distinction. If two disembodied ghosts occupy the same space how can one tell the difference? If there are multiple ghosts in the same area how can one tell the difference? That is just it, something that is disembodied cannot take up space, and therefore something that is disembodied cannot have a consciousness. This means that there could never be a disembodied ghost because it wouldn’t be able to think. (Janzen 96)

Thirdly, one must argue the relevance of society. If ghosts do not exist then why do so many people believe in them?  Well, this could be that stories have been passed down in ancient cultures of dead coming back in the form of ghosts or spirits. In Gary Schlesinger’ paper on the history of ghosts he gives many cultures that have used ghosts through many generations.  These include the Egyptians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Native Americans. He views ghosts as a kind of metaphor. “These ghosts are consummate representations of powerful unrealized and unfulfillible desires…” (Schlesinger p. 130) He also goes onto say that a ghost is a metaphor for how someone’s past can influence his or her future. This is what ghosts could have been to past cultures. If they are just metaphors than did people just buy into it and forced their mind is playing tricks on them? In the “Ghostbusting” part of his paper, Schlesinger that “ Ghosts can be invoked to represent archaic aspects of the mind, or real traumatic experiences overwhelmed the self’s capacity to digest them” (Schlesinger p. 133). This means that minds are playing tricks on the body.  So this could account for all the ghost sightings in areas that something bad ahs happened (i.e. murder or suicide). This is due to our brains inability to fathom the aspect of it.  Thus our brain plays games with our body to get rid of the pain. So just our brain not wanting to think about something can bring on ghosts. 

Lastly, people may argue, but what of the point of the pictures of ghosts and the images we see on TV. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the TV has lied to us. But as for the images, well there is the argument for a editing software. Lets just take that out of the equation completely.  In Shapiro and Boyd’s paper they discuss how sometimes the images of ghosts are sometimes not completely accurate (Boyd, Shapiro p. 991). So this means that even some of the hard evidence for the imaging of ghosts is sometimes not even accurate. So what of the video of things moving and voices saying GET OUT? Could this also be a trick? If one goes to a place that many people think are haunted, could there possibly be someone there trying to scare them? Or as stated in the last paragraph it could be the mind playing a trick on them and they think they hear a voice.

In conclusion, ghosts seem to be a mind trick and appear to have no way to ever possibly existed in the realm of science. Many people still believe in the notion that they are or were once haunted by a ghost. But, many people also do not believe in ghosts. It is an argument that will be going on for ages and ages to come. Yet now a days many people still believe that there are ghosts somewhere out in the world waiting to be found, seen, or haunted by. Should people be frightened by ghosts? It is something that will remain to be seen for each and every individual. So in many ways a ghost is a metaphor for people to use to get their point across or to strike fear into an. So do you still feel like you are being watched?

Works Cited

Janzen, Greg. "Physicalists Have Nothing To Fear From Ghosts." International Journal Of Philosophical Studies 20.1 (2012): 91-104. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.

Schlesinger, Gary. "A Brief History Of Ghosts: Commentary On Paper By Laurel Moldawsky Silber." Psychoanalytic Dialogues 22.1 (2012): 129-138. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.

Shapiro, Jeffrey, and Robert Boyd. "The Physics Of Ghost Imaging." Quantum     Information Processing 11.4 (2012): 949-993. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.

Smart, B. (1971) ‘Can Disembodied Persons be Spatially Located?’, Analysis 31:

133–8.

Analysis

Analysis: Breaking Bad

What would you do for your family? In the TV show Walter white does some pretty awful things for is family. If you do not know the show, it is about a man who is diagnosed with stage three-lung cancer. Being a high school chemistry teacher (though you later find out that he is a genus) he does not have very good insurance and doesn't make the salary for treatment. He realizes this, so he wants to make money for his family to live off of when he passes. So he goes into the manufacturing of crystal meth. There is more detail than this but that is for later. What this television show conveys is that family comes above all else, that greed will eventually take hold of the good motives, and that a good man can easily become a bad one.

During the first season, Walt is shown as a family man and a loving husband and father. So he does what he needs to help his family when he is diagnosed with cancer. This is the production of meth. Walt does this for his family so it is a noble cause. This gives the viewer an idea that family is the most important thing. Some people do not have a family per say but the message stays the same. Instead of laying around feeling sorry for himself, Walt decides to act to give his family what they need. Family is indeed what is most important to him. Family is what makes him do the things he does. A main plot point throughout the whole of the series is that family is what drove Walter and what eventually led to his downfall.

The idea of family being behind Walts downfall is also just as crucial to his success. When he and his wife got a divorce, he started going into a downward spiral. This included shooting and killing people and trying to kill his boss. In a way this is an analogy of the broken home. Walt goes into his low point when he and his family get torn apart. The message of that would be that a broken home leads to his downfall. Yet through all this he still provides money to his family.  So this could convey the message of loving your family even though they don't feel the same. So Walt shows is that family is his life and that he would do anything for it. This drove Walt to do things that he thought he was never capable of.

The next theme that this television show conveys is that greed will eventually take hold of even the purest motives. Like stated earlier, family was Walts main motive to begin with. But after he sees how much money he begins to rake in, he becomes very greedy. In most cases he nickels and dimes people. In one instance a junkie robbed on of his dealers. Walt wants his partner to find that junkie and get his money by any means necessary. His partner explains that this was just a menial fraction of the whole profit. This conveys the theme that greed overcame his desire to help his family. Later in the series he starts getting more and more money, but doesn’t help his family. He starts to separate from them and eventually they have nothing to do with him. Greed overcame him in the since that he could have stopped making meth when he hit a million dollars (which would have been plenty to live off of) he kept making meth and digging his hole deeper. He thought he could fill the void of his family not being there with the money. He realizes that it could never fill that hole that his family had left. He was to late to get them back. Greed made him become a ruthless drug lord that had no sympathy or empathy for anyone. He even turns on his own partner multiple times in the series. So in a way he turns on his own family and friends because of his greed and lust for more money is a strong message. So this idea that greed can blacken the even most pure of motives is a strong theme throughout this whole entire series.

In the whole scheme of the show the last two themes can be easily identified, his love for his family and his greed spoiling his good motives, but this next theme is also a very apparent one. Greed is one of the many things that Walt was guilty of. But in the beginning of the series he is shown as a loving father. How can a good man become an evil drug lord? This idea of good man turning into an evil person is a main theme throughout the show. Not only was he greedy, He also developed a bad lying habit. At the start it was to keep his wife from knowing the truth so she wouldn’t worry about where the money is coming from. When she eventually catches the partner, Walt lies about what he and his partner have been doing. So he just keeps building and building this tower of lies. Which eventually comes crumbling back to earth. So on top of the lies Walt also is only out for his own self-glory. In one instance, he doesn’t want to lander the money so it looks clean; instead he wants his family to know that he provided for them. So not only does he go from being a good man to a greedy man, he becomes a liar and he also becomes vain.

Breaking bad shows that a good man can turn into an evil one, it shows how greed can overtake someone, and it shows that family comes above all else. These are just some of the main themes running through the whole series, there are many more and many in just each individual episode. Breaking Bad shows the length in which one would go to provide for his family even through the hard times. This shows the drastic measures of which one would go to help his family. What would you do for yours?

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Giligan, Vince. Breaking Bad. Dir. Michelle MacLaren. FX. 20 Jan. 2008. Television.

Response

Response: Hope

What is hope? Hope maybe more of a question rather than an answer. People are always so strange in the way they look at the world. Why do people look at the world like they do? Hope seems to protrude through everything we do, but it never seems nailed down to a specific thing. Some people in other parts of the world look like they have no hope. But do they really have hope? If they do why do they hope? Do they hope that their life will somehow turn around and become something that is not so miserable? Do they hope for some kind of savior to save them from the place in which they dwell? Regardless of what your religion or non-religion is, these are questions that seem to be unanswerable.

It is up to what the perception of the beholder is. Do people that view the world from an evolutionary standpoint have hope? Do people who have a god have hope? Is this why they are at each other’s throats constantly?   If you look on the news you see people constantly fighting each other about what is fact and what is fiction. Why can’t we hope to live in peace? If people would stick to what they believe instead of force feeding it through the throats of school children and let the people believe what they want to believe. If people all hope for something, shouldn’t they be helping each other instead of trying to make them choose a side? People are constantly saying that you should believe this or believe that. How do we know what to believe? How do we know what to hope for. Maybe people are at each others throats because they think that it will make the other loose hope and they will win the argument. Do they want to make the other side lose hope? If the human race is hoping for each other to lose hope, why are we even hoping?

But getting away from the religious part of it.  Why is hope so evident in the ones who seem like they should have none? Go into a hospital and people will be full of hope. Why is that? Maybe its because they feel that they can change they feel. Or maybe because they feel like it’s the only option they have. They feel as if they are in control of it and that if they tell their brain that they are hoping to get better it will magically happen.  Can you use hope to cure a disease? Can it be the cure to something that we do not know about? If hope is a cure to a disease, can you measure it? Can you measure if hope is working or not? If you look in cards at the store they say, “I hope you get well soon. Why is that? Is hope some kind of prayer to a god that exists? That is a strange idea to think about. Why do we throw this word around as a way to save face? If you truly cared about them wouldn’t you do more than hope?  Some people just view hope as a way to cope. If there loved one is sick and all they do is hope, they feel as if they are doing all they can. In some cases this maybe true. But in most instances it is not. In most instances they can love the person and care for them. Are those just synonyms with hope?

            People who are sick hope, but what about everyone else. Do people have a choice about hoping for something? Can people not hope?  This is a strange question that doesn’t seem to answer itself. People sometimes say that the world is a hopeless place. Does that mean people in the world do not hope? People all hope for something at one point or anther. If you turn in a paper to a teacher and you hope to get a good grade, is that hope or just some form of well wishing? Or is hope just some form of lust? If people hope to get newest car with the next paycheck, or hope they get a bb gun for Christmas, is that truly hope? Or is it just lust disguised as hope? Hope looks like lust in some cases but it tends not to be viewed as that way.  Could hope just be lust that has a nice ring to it? If that is true then why are we hoping for things to happen? Isn’t that just a form of lusting?  Greed is also synonymous with lust, so if we hope are we just being greedy?

            Why do people even hope in the first place?  Is it a way to escape the real world? Hope gives people that feeling of satisfaction or the feeling that they have mad a difference. Can we hope for bad things? If people are getting bullied at school and they hope they bully will pay for what he has done, is that not a form of bullying itself? Can hope have a negative connotation? Look at the way people phrase hope sometimes “I hope you die,” or “I hope you pay for what you’ve done.” And then something bad does happen. Is that just a product of chance or did your hope magically cast judgment on them. In this case hope seems to have a bad taste right? But is a good thing in the eye of the beholder. Is hope one of those things that is neutral and can be either good or bad?

            Hope can be viewed as a wonderful blessing or a curse. It is the way that the person chooses to view it. Why do we hope? What is hope exactly? Those are questions that people will probably never know. Should people ever lose hope? Can a person hope in a hopeless world? These are two questions that people will have to answer themselves.

Welcome

Hello, my name is Scott Hardenbrook. I am a full time student at Columbus State Community College.. This blog is for my english class, but who knows if I will use it in the future. The degree I am pursuing is a "Integrated Sound and Video" degree. Ever since I was a child I have always liked computers, but as I got older and the more and more movies I saw the more and more I wanted to know how they made the explosion sound and look so realistic. So fast forward a couple of years I am graduated and deciding what to do with the rest of my life, and that is why I am here. After I get my degree I want to transfer and get another degree in Audio Production. That is a little about me and I look forward to this year.