Skeptical College Essays Samples For Students

Descartes, Hume, and the author of Ecclesiastes express some form of skepticism. From their reading and arguments, we understand the extent of their skepticism and how they differ. In this paper, we will express the form of skepticism from Ecclesiastes, Descartes, and Hume. We will proceed ahead to illustrate how their skepticism differs. Moreover, we will provide insight into the different problems that the three philosophers are trying to confront with their respective versions. Furthermore, we will give viable reasons why Descartes version is the most plausible compared to the arguments of other authors.
Furthermore, there might be a ...

Descartes Skepticism

The philosophy of Descartes, usually called Cartesianism, is summarized in Discourse, in a more complete form - in the "Reflections" on First Philosophy (Meditationes de prima philosophia in qua Dei existentia et Animae immortalitas demonstratur, 1641, second edition with Objectiones Septimae, 1642, the Paris edition in French, with corrections Descartes in 1647) and from a different point of view in the "first principles of philosophy" (Principia philosophiae, 1644, a French translation in 1647).
Sensory experience is not able to give reliable knowledge, because we are often faced with the illusions and hallucinations. In addition, the reasoning is deducing conclusions from the ...

This book is a sequel of another book by the same author – The Four Agreements – which was written for people of all ages and culture around the world. The author believes that is the book is about things that are beyond words; those that can be experienced from one’s own eyes. Although he had many time previously, it was his son who was more successful in getting this message across to his acquaintances. Therefore, he has chosen to honor his son in this book. Here also, he has chosen to write in first-person to address the spiritually inclined.
...

Introduction

Richard Wright’s, novel Black Boy and Di Donato’s Christ in Concrete lend themselves to analysis on the theme of religion. Black Boy is the author’s autobiographical account of his life from his earliest memories to his departure at age nineteen to the North. In the autobiography, Wright grows up in a highly racist environment in the South at the time of the Jim Crow laws and intense prejudice. He finds his way by being independent after his father abandons them. He comes off as the victim of his own thirst for physical and intellectual growth. He is ...

Disaster recovery management

Introduction
A disaster is an unwanted/unexpected havoc that occurs and causes detrimental effects. The effects might cause harm to individuals and lead to the destruction of property. Examples of disasters include fire, floods, and volcanic eruptions (Hermansson, 2015). Disaster recovery management is the act of controlling the emergence of disasters through the institution of stringent measures that aim at curbing chances of occurrence of accidents.

The essential task, ongoing evaluation, and major policies and procedural changes

As a business continuity lead manager, the fundamental task would be to ensure that the right personnel is in the right areas of work so as to maximize the business continuity performance. Also, the ...

The philosophical contributions of Rene Descartes remain the cornerstone upon which doubt is built. The subjects of Rene begin when he decides to bring to an end the past conceptions through models of reasoning and intellect. In his analogy of falsehood and misconceptions, the meditator alludes to the past preconceptions as he resolves to recreate the certainty of knowledge by only accepting as truth things that he has proof. It is essential to understand the philosophical analogy that certain things must be made subject to doubt. As he begins to question the rationale that governs his perceptions, he began ...

Heart of Darkness is a novel written by Joseph Conrad. The setting of the book is in Belgian Congo, which was the most infamous European colony in Africa. This is a story about the protagonist Marlow’s journey to self-discovery, and his experiences in Congo. Conrad’s story explores the colonialism period in Africa to demonstrate Marlow’s struggles. Along the way, he faces insanity, death, his fear of failure, and cultural contamination as he makes his way to the inner station. Conrad through the protagonist and antagonist life explores European imperialism and its effects to Africans.
Marlow is the ...

Abstract

In this paper, I will look at a low context society - the United States, and a high context society - Japan. Both cultures - Japanese and American - differ in the way they broadcast consumer advertisements. By comparing and contrasting TV commercials typical of both cultures, I will try to find answers to the questions that interest me. To do this, three points of comparisons will be made and examined: how the commercials in these cultures differ in styles, how both consumer cultures target children as consumers, and an image of contemporary woman in Japanese and American commercial ads.

Comparing and Contrasting Japanese and American Commercials

Japan ...

Introduction

Today, more than ever, science is used by decision makers to know the best way to deal with a given problem. This is especially true for environmental issues, such as food production, water distribution and climate change. During the last decades, policy makers have been trying to use the data made available by scientist around the world to assess the impact of climate change on the planet, mainly its geo-economic implications, and the ways to tackle the issues associated with it in the most effective way.
Although there is a general consensus that there has been a steady increase in temperature ...

A very popular misconception about skeptics is the general idea that they are individuals who have a tendency to disbelieve things. However the true and actual meaning of skepticism wonders far away from doubt, negativity or disbelief. Skepticism is a process that involves more of the application of critical thinking and detailed reasoning in the determination of the validity of a given issue. Skepticism involves pursuit of supported conclusion in the determination of truths and facts. It involves systematic doubt, suspended judgment and often elements of criticism. It also entails doubt concerning widely accepted religious and cultural principles for example morality. Philosophers ...

Cardillo Travel Systems

The Cardillo Travel Systems case shows the way the management cooked up the books only to be caught later. This essay will attempt to answer some questions on this case.
False Representation to External Auditors: The executives at Cardillo Travel Systems were aware it needed to maintain a minimum of $3 million of stockholder’s equity threshold established by the court outstanding against the organization. (Ritterburg, 2012). This was the reason that shaped their intent to falsify the organization’s books to misrepresent facts before investors and creditors. The issue started with the accountants at Cardillo making an improper ...

John Locke’s Theories of Knowledge

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Outline (Bennett, 2004)
I. Of the Origin of Ideas

Perception and Senses- Hume detailed the difference between what the mind perceives and how a person actually feels.

Limitlessness of the Human Imagination- The human mind’s capability of imagining has no bounds.
II. Skeptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding

Two Kinds of Human Enquiry- The natural division of the human reason.

Relations of Ideas- These are ideas that are already certain and established (e.g. Arithmetics).
Matters of Fact- These are ideas that still have room for contradictions (e.g. it will snow tomorrow).

Cause and Effect Relation- This is where all human enquiries are founded upon.

Past Experiences- Hume discusses how the human’s idea of the future is anchored upon experiences from the past.
III. Skeptical Solutions of these Doubts- Human’s will only be ...

This paper will look at how the people from Eastern Europe are portrayed in Western Media. The focus of this paper will be on the stereotyping of Russian women as being beautiful, the Roma as thieves and the people of the Balkans as violent.
The popular opinion of Russia women is that they are beautiful and mysterious. They believe that they walk around on the ice in high heels, do not sweat even in fur coats and avoid public transportation. The goal of the article The Most Beautiful Russian Girls is to ascertain the kind of lives that these ...

Philosophy Final Exam

4. (a) How does Locke describe the state of nature?
Locke describes the state of nature as a logical abstraction developed by man himself. He does not entirely accept it as the outcome of historical developments. He describes nature from two perspectives. The first view sees nature as a free environment where everyone has the liberty to do what pleases them as long as their actions do not have an adverse impact on others. Nature makes every man equal. No man has power over another and everyone is free. Every man has some power which lets him act with ...

There are various theories that have been derived in an attempt to explain the behaviors of people. All these theories have an explanation behind the behaviors of people as well as the different reasons as to why the people behave the way they do. Below is a discussion of some of the theories that come into play.

There is the platonic argument (Matus Para. 6). This theory has it that the people define reality from what they have observed. This is seen in the allegory of caves. The people in the caves had known only the shapes they saw on ...

I recently watched a documentary where scientists claimed they could create rain in the desert. I was skeptical at first. In my conception, it was not possible for man to make rain. I am very skeptical about the traditional folk tales in traditional communities that narrate of leaders who had the power to make rain. The scientists in today’s contemporary society stand a better chance of making compared to the traditional rainmakers. Even then, I reserved my skepticism about the possibility of artificially manipulating the clouds in order to create rain. It is after watching the entire documentary that I ...

They can be described as sensible and detail oriented and just like the skeptics, they have a strong personality. They are prone to making decisions without consulting others and make remarks that may make people alienate them hence being loners. They look for facts and accuracy in everything but rarely consider these facts while making their decisions. They tend to pass the blame when something goes wrong.

Followers

They are responsible decision makers, tend to take less risk and always seem to see things from their own perspective however, despite their cautious less, followers have been seen to spontaneous at times. They ...

Chinese Economic Expansion and Increased Air Pollution

In recent years, China has been experiencing unprecedented economic growth. Chinese prosperity has had negative side-effects, including extreme environmental pollution (Wong, 2014). What researchers call “ambient particulate matter pollution” was the fourth-leading risk factor for deaths in China, contributing to 1.2 million deaths in 2010. Construction, industrial waste and greenhouse gasses are the major contributors to an epidemic that is creating a public outcry for government intervention. The Chinese government and other stakeholders have asserted that air pollution is decreasing and that the main culprits are not large industrial corporations. They point to strict regulations that they claim have been ...

One of the dark secrets of Newton is his deep curiosity and obsession to religion and his devotion to occult. Another revelation shows that Newton has tried to enter pseudoscience which means he settled on beliefs and practices that are mistakenly known as based on scientific method given that before everything, he believes that everything in this world can be subscribed to scientific understanding. According to Walter Lewin, one of the speakers in the video, Isaac Newton is allergic to criticisms even before that is why he decided on keeping his inventions and even the other earthly manners that ...

Rene Descartes had a philosophical treatise published in 1647 called the meditations on the first philosophy (Statile et al. 2010, pp.548). His book has six different meditations that include meditation of the things called doubt, meditation of the nature of the human mind, meditation of the existence of God, meditation that concerns true and false, meditation that concerns the importance of the material things, and the meditation that concerns the differences between mind and body.

First Meditation: Doubtful Things

This mediation called skeptical doubts starts as the mediator makes a reflection on some of the beliefs during his lifetime that now he attest as falsehoods. ...

Human beings seem to have done all that they can to destroy the world that they live in. Over the millennia, the world has seen some radical changes to become worse than it ever was. From climatic, to environmental, to social aspects, the world seems to get worse and worse as the time goes by. Not all the changes made have been bad, human have done all that they deem necessary to make the world a better and more effective place for them to live in. However, in so doing, they have depleted resources that are finite in nature, and ...

A critical analysis of the paintings of the Tower of Babel directly suggest the perspective of the both the translation and labor that refer to the utopian spirit of social critique as well as to the resistance to the authority. The art paintings appear to embody an expectation of a multiplicity of tongues as a result of the harsh judgment from the Supreme Being. The Tower of Babel may not be a realized vision. It can be understood in an angle where the Utopian ideal was to be discovered. The Utopian discourse was presented in a manner that allowed the 15th century society ...

Socrates and Oedipus present a good comparison as they both engage in a coherent pursuit for knowledge. Moreover, they are both renowned for their superior human wisdom. However, in their search for knowledge, they are presented as taking a skeptical attitude towards the gods. Oedipus superior wisdom is derived from how he dealt with the riddle of the Sphinx who was a half monster lion and half woman (Sophocles 89). Like Oedipus, Socrates is recognized for his superior human wisdom as he has knowledge of the human things and was the greatest philosopher of history.
Oedipus and Socrates had good intentions in ...

8. Which of the following theories of privacy supports the right of a person to be free from interference in his/her private space?
a) The skeptical view of privacy
b) The communitarian view of privacy
c) The control theory of privacy.
d) The restricted access theory of privacy. Pg24
9. Which of the following theories support the idea that privacy is an intrinsic human value?
a) The control theory of privacy.
b) The restricted access theory of privacy.
c) Deontological view of privacy. Pg 33
d) Teleological view of privacy
10. Which of the ...

Science Fiction

Introduction
Fantasy as well as science fiction answers this question –What if? Science fiction often takes our understanding when it comes to how our universe works and even imagines technologies and ideas that people have not witnessed yet, but could still fit within our understanding. The fiction, which expands on what people know about science, is working on known principles. There are many roots of science fiction and fantasy as a genre that can be explained through the course of this study.
In this research, we also argue that there are major creators of science fiction and fantasy ...

If religion were never introduced to people, what kind of society could they have? If religion had been absent since time immemorial and if people were exactly the same as animals in the jungle, what lifestyle could they live for? And yet, if people and the rest of the animals on earth had been “nothing but matter” (Dawkins, 3), what sense of life could have been left to them? To consider these conditional statements or these what-if situations, Richard Dawkins might think that humanity itself could be senseless because people lived without a sense of purpose. And if religion were ...

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The most comprehensive definition of a UFO researcher gave the unknown Joseph Allen Hynek, "the perception of an object or light, visible in the sky or space or above the earth's surface, the phenomenon of the ghost, the trajectory, the overall dynamics and the nature of the luminescence which is not logical, conventional explanation is a mystery, not only for witnesses, but remains unexplained even after a close examination of all available evidence specialists capable, if possible, identify the phenomenon from the point of view of common sense. "
In other words, if a ...

Throughout history, most societies that created myths and legends about women regarded them as a distinctly weaker and inferior caste of beings, whose main role was that of wife and mother. Women who passively accepted their inferior status and did not aspire to economic and educational equality with men were glorified, particularly in myths about the Mother and the Virgin. Those who failed to limit themselves to the confines of these myths and stereotypes were demonized, or even literally condemned as witches. Nazi Germany and the other fascist states were the most extreme cases of all, with their totalitarian myths ...

Having been involved in several cases, Daniel Groll’s intention to provide a lasting solution to this problem intensified. His intentions are to develop a model for understanding disagreements in a clinical setting. Groll at providing insight into what doctors can and cannot plausibly be said to know regarding what’s best for their patients. Groll deals with this by developing taxonomy of clinical disagreements. Groll’s secondary aim is to show that Robert M. Veatch’s theory on what on what clinicians can and cannot about their patients’ well-being is overly skeptical and limits the role. In the article, Groll presents a ...

Global warming has become a major concern in recent years. Politicians, lobbyists, scientists, and major corporations all have voiced their opinions and concerns, but there still seems to be a lot of uncertainty regarding the issue. Many people attribute the problem to pollution, which can come from cars, airplanes, factories, and many other places. The problem has become more apparent with the increase of natural disasters like hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes. Images of polar bears trapped on tiny ice caps show us that the large glaciers that used to be in the arctic and Antarctic areas are melting. Though some people ...

Compare and Contrast the characters of Carter Weatherbee and Percy Cuthfert in the short story in a far country by Jack London.
Carter Weatherbee and Percy Cuthfert are two men who set to travel North in search of better financial prospects. Weatherbee is a clerk who knows nothing else apart from his profession. He is a lazy, uncultured man who would not move a muscle to help the travelling party in their various responsibilities. He is described as a man of a lower class who considered himself a gentleman though his character contradicts that of a gentleman (London, 2000). He is also a very skeptical man and ...

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking, as stated in http://www.criticalthinking.com, “is the identification and evaluation of evidence to guide decision making”. Critical thinking is the way one analyzes the information relying on the facts and not on his/her own concerns only.
Thus, the critical thinker is the one who “decide what to believe or do”. He/she is open to new information and others’ points of view. The critical thinker tries to compare the facts and define them clearly. He/she is accurate and careful in decision making to be precise in his/her point of view. The critical thinker always asks questions for analysis, ...

Summary

Bilal Haq, a scientist from the National Science Foundation Arlingtion, Virginia encountered foraminifera on his trip to Qingdao in China. Foraminifera are small creatures that grow shells on their bodies. Their shells are varied and very diverse, as if they are created by visionary artists. Haq thought the foraminifera would make beautiful pieces of art and should be put on display. Haq’s fellow colleague from China, Zheng, agreed and put things into action by involving local craft workers. It resulted in a park for foraminifera since the end of 2009 and already a million people have visited (Larkins, 2012).

It is ...

A Troublesome Process: The Articles of Confederation, the Constitution and

the Creation of America’s Republican Ethic

When the Second Continental Congress adjourned in 1781, it was not to the universal acclaim of the men who thought they had worked out a practical and effective means of balancing centralized power with the autonomy of the young republic’s 13 members. The new nation’s revolutionary epoch had left its leaders profoundly mistrustful of any government endowed with undue power. One cannot help but wonder how many members of the second Congress left the proceedings suspecting they had only partially done the work of social engineering needed to knit together the ...