The Lazy Thinker

In this quote, McIntyre is talking about the prisoner of the Château and comparing them to someone characterized from the “Count of Monte Cristo”. “Of course someone may have forgotten or suffered brain damage or simply not attended sufficiently at the relevant times to be able to give the relevant account. But to say of someone under someone description that he is the same person as someone characterized quite differently is precisely to say that it makes sense to ask him to give an intelligible narrative account enabling us to understand how he could at different times in different places be one in the same person and yet so differently characterized.” in this passage McIntyre is explaining how people and their identities are always changing and never the same from birth until death. McIntyre is telling everyone to be held accountable and let people know about your identities or identity before they’re able to create their own image of yourself. The stories that we tell from when we are a child or our younger selves are used to create a narrative in which we can tell people how we became the person we are today. These stories allow us to bond with others and create small families and war communities in which we can share similar stories and/or emotions. These connections that we perform with people allow us to create and form moral identities in which we can learn and decide how to view the world and how to view right from wrong. In his example, he describes the The prisoner of the Château and the Count of Monte Cristo to be two completely different people. That is why he urges the count to be able and tell his story so that we may figure out why the count did the things that he did.  

Preview(opens in a new tab)

We have family friends that come visit us from time to time. I personally don’t enjoy their company but because they are very close to my mom and dad I have to deal with it. The father of the family is always asking me questions about how I’m doing and what I’m up to in life. It can get really really annoying but it’s even worse when I don’t tell him what I’m up to because he draws his own conclusions. One time I hadn’t talk to him in over a year, and the next time I had talked to him, he believed that I had been to prison. I thought it was just a crude joke, but it’s because I wasn’t communicating with him over the course of that year. He assumed that I had gone to prison because the last time he talked to me, he thought I was in a very bad state mentally.  He figured because I hadn’t talked to him in a while that I did something extremely rash but it was up to me to describe my experiences and stories that I had encountered and dealt with over the past year in order to prove that I am myself. And it wasn’t just this experience either, but my friends constantly check up on me to make sure I’m doing OK because if I don’t get back to them for a while they assume the worst has happened.  It is my responsibility to inform people and my friends what I am up to in order to update their depiction of my identity.

I think Leonard is right when he says “Memory can change the shape of a room…” The Film demonstrates the changes of how Leonard perceives things without a memory. Without his memory, Leonard relies on his photographs to aid his investigation in finding out who killed his wife but as the story progresses, it’s shown that there are speculations as to what happened to his wife. Leonard is unable to distinguish between his own facts and the truth which is what leads him to become deceived by others. A majority of the instances in which Leonard is able to find out certain information about his case is shown to be either untrue or unknown due to his memory loss which leads him into one giant roundabout. I agree to his statement that memories can change the shape of the room but I disagree on memories being more reliable than notes. As shown in the movie, Leonard’s only tool in this case is his factual evidence in which he tattoo’s it all over his body. The reason as to why it doesn’t help him at times is because the foundation of his notes is based on previous memories as to which only Leonard knows AT THAT time but because of his constant memory loss, there’s no way he’s able to have correct factual evidence. The reading that included Hume talked about how individual human stories are seen as identities that are used to communicate with others. I think Hume would see Leonard’s condition as similar to his theory because Leonard’s identity is always changing non-stop. Leonard is still Leonard no matter what but every time he loses his memory he becomes a somewhat slightly different person. The person that aids him in the beginning of the movie (Officer Gammell) is able to see that Leonard is unable to think clearly or has some sort of disability. It’s because of this that he decides to help Leonard despite Leonard not trusting him at first. Leonard increasingly throughout the movie becomes more and more hostile towards Teddie which is not what his original self was depicted as.

I consider Volleyball to be a form of art. For me, volleyball allows me to become a completely different person when I play, which is completely different from when I play other sports like soccer or skating.

I don’t believe my example follows Tolstoy’s definition of art 100%, but it does fit in certain categories. Playing Volleyball allows me to accept it’s purpose of feeling pleasured but I wouldn’t considered it to be a condition of the human life. I do believe it does allow others to be infected and convey their positive emotions and feelings. I agree somewhat with what Tolstoy believes because I do believe that art or any form of art can be infectious in nature but not all art has to be infectious. A quote that Tolstoy presents is  “If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art.” This quote resonates with the reason I chose Volleyball as a form of art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DO8yOVYXr0 longest rally ever ( sincerity of the artist)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45RRb3xFjxk really good saves ( individuality of feeling transmitted)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6OzwNxSUKo crowd reaction (clearness in which feeling is transmitted)

The film Existenz closely relates to the theme of Plato’s idea of reality. In both allegory of the cave and Existenz, all of the characters show signs of struggling to believe in what is real and what isn’t. The game Tranzcendenz shows players struggling to find their way through the game because they aren’t sure what’s real and what’s not. Similar to the cave, they are being shown simulations of things very much like the prisoners in the cave were seeing. The movie also shows how far people will go to believe in something even though they are unable to know for certain if that is what is real and what isn’t. For example, many of the people are chasing down Allegra in the movie because they have become so blurred with what is real and what isn’t. Comparing the movie to Plato’s hierarchical scheme of reality, Cronenburg’s ultimate message was to show his audience that there are different levels of reality that each character must traverse. For example, all of the characters start off in the game world. On Plato’s scale, this might be the 2nd or 3rd level which is non-physical world. Then the outer level, which would be considered the meta-physical level, would compare to the game as being “outside” of the game. This would be equivalent to Ted and Allegra being back in the room outside of their game pods but technically still IN the game. The outer layer or level of Plato’s level describes the mind of the human body. A scene that perfectly describes this would be when Ted starts to become aware of the game being suspicious. He exclaims, “I’m feeling a little disconnected from my real life. I’m kinda losing touch with the texture of it. You know what I mean? I actually think there is an element of psychosis involved here.” During the ending, when all characters are outside of the game, Ted and Allegra decide to shoot the creator of the game. This outer level represents the mind and can be shown at the very end when one of the game players asks if they’re still in the game. The characters start to question their own reality which is what Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was trying to show.

The similarity between the status of the prisoners in Plato‘s cave and spectators in a cinema are very alike. Plato believes that once you open your eyes to the truth, it’s very hard to look back into what you were believing in before you learn the truth. Movies and media on TV and social media always depict completely different standards compared to how we are accustomed to living. Sometimes we do mistake fiction for reality because of this. Some people place high standards and beliefs on reality based on fiction or these works in movies and media. It is highly possible that the physical world we believe in isn’t even real. It may just be something that we are accustomed to and cannot look behind us into the light as one of the prisoners did in Plato‘s allegory of the cave. In the movie, there are times where Ted has moments of realization in which some of the aspects of the game are not real. In one scene he creates a gun out of bones of fish or what I assumed to be a fish like creature. once he creates the gun he uses it to shoot the waiter. This scene can represent the outer layer of reality in which the action that Ted committed might have seemed real but in actuality was just an aspect of the game. There is another scene in which both Ted and Allegra are attempting to connect to a game device but it is actually a horrible looking creature. The emotion shown by Allegra when she discovers her pod may have been infected leads her to believe that she is going to die. At this point in the movie however she is unable to figure out how to continue to join in the game.  She then enters a state of depression and at this point makes Ted realize something is off. This is also equivalent to Plato‘s inner level of reality which is nothingness. This level of reality is very hard to understand as most people are usually content with the things they know about their reality and aren’t so fast to question if things are real or not.

In Standard Form, Clifford believed that actions were always influencing people in some form. These actions based on no factual claims or evidence caused harm to others and therefore he believed that it was wrong to believe in unjustifiable beliefs. Clifford believed that actions people create based on beliefs that weren’t supported by evidence would either harm others directly or cause social issues. I personally would not agree with his statement due to the fact that I know people who don’t feel the need to provide evidence and because of their actions, no harm has come to me. It is of the own persons will to believe in what they want to believe, evidence or not. His thesis was significant because many people of a religious group were falsely accused over crimes they didn’t commit but because there was lack of evidence they were convicted guilty. He believed that people needed more solid proof in order to believe in God and the fact that they were believing in God without evidence was “ taking the easy way out”. Clifford also believed that actions based on beliefs that were not backed up by evidence would either harm others directly or cause social issues. He also believed that everyone’s beliefs influence others in one way or another. The examples he used to claim that his arguments were true were his depictions of the shipowner being unsure whether or not his ship was going to be able to sail. Because of this, the ship owner was the influencer of his beliefs and thus led to others being influenced despite it being so negative (they died). Despite it being out of the ship owners control, I do believe Clifford has some logical reasoning behind his thesis. There is in fact a common issue found in today’s age relating to religion. Despite Christianity and Catholicism being two of the most prevalent religions in the United States, there are still other religions that seek to “recruit” others. Usually these forms of religion that form recruitments are often not fundamentally safe. Isis, one of the world’s most dangerous extremist terrorist groups, recruits people every day. The main issue with this group is that the foundation on which their religion is found is under a different sect of Islam. This sect is not proven by anyone and yet has recruited thousands and thousands of members. No one in the Islam community fully believes anything in which Isis has claimed to be true. Because of these lies, millions and millions of people are affected negatively.  It is because of Clifford but I fully agree that it is wrong to believe anything without sufficient evidence. I think Clifford’s reasoning shows signs of being an Ad Hoc Rescue fallacy because there is no way to argue his assumption if it partially involves his past when he was on the shipwreck.

Begging the question: women deserve rights but should not be in the military because only men should serve in the military.

Ad Hominem: The rules my dad makes when I lived with my parents were so dumb. It’s mostly because of how old he was that he just didn’t understand.

Equivocation: if I told you I was going to tell you a secret but only time will tell, there’s no way I would be able to tell you.

Slippery slope: my mom is always on about me playing video games. She starts off by saying it’s causing me to not get enough sleep, and then it starts to make me feel depressed. Ultimately she says video games will end up being the death of me.

Strawman: my dad thinks that I’m always stealing money out of his wallet which is clearly not true. I didn’t steal money out of his wallet yesterday and the fact that he would base his claim on that is ridiculous.

Tu Quoque: my dad thinks he knows everything but he clearly doesn’t. I mean he’s my dad, and I don’t know anything so why should he?

Non Sequitur: going on roller coasters can be dangerous, but we deal with danger every day. When I go into my kitchen and I use the knives, I always deal with the risk that I could hurt myself. That’s why roller coasters are OK to ride.

False dichotomy: how many times has your partner cheated on you? About two times or more?

Argument from ignorance: I’ve never seen the tooth fairy so I know the tooth fairy doesn’t exist.

Red herring: There’s clearly an issue with the education system we have in California. In order to fix that issue, we should really be thinking about how some of the businesses surrounding colleges are affected.

Irrelevant reason:
United States hotdogs taste really good. That’s why Korea should really have them.

Gamblers:
You know I’ve lost six times in a row, but I’m bound to win the next time because seven is a lucky number!

Valid argument with false conclusion: if my mom loves ice cream, then she must be a diabetic. My mom is not a diabetic. My mom must not love ice cream.

Sound argument: Drinking water is much healthier than soda. I have been drinking soda a lot more lately. Not drinking water is unhealthy for me.

Weak inductive arguement: Because a majority of the United States enjoyed having Obama as their president, we should never elect someone that resembles Obama.

Strong inductive arguement: I really enjoy comedy and drama movies. Netflix has a ton of comedy and drama movies. I will enjoy watching them all.

Our argument for the first day of class was talking about the injustices that people of authority commit. I would have to put it as such: If people who have some form of authoritative power use it to benefit themselves and take control of others, then they are committing an injustice. The reasoning behind my statement was because of an issue I had with my Spanish teacher high school year. My high school Spanish teacher was an absolutely horrible human being who abused every single ounce of authority she had in order to benefit herself or torment others for her enjoyment. It was because of her that I not only started to fail high school, but gave up on it entirely. She would call my dad every day to let him know that I was a horrible student when I had done nothing at all. She was extremely racist towards some of the African-American students and always picked on the Asian students. When I went to another authoritative figure to deal with this issue, my counselor told me that I was making things up or exaggerating. I was even punished for attempting to fix this issue I had with the teacher. I was mocked all year and completely destroyed my self esteem.  even my parents were upset at both the entire situation and myself. I blame myself every day for what happened and yet there was nothing I could have done. it is because of the situation that I was able to come to the conclusion that authoritative figures use their power to control other people for their own benefit.The reason that both Alberto and I came to that conclusion was because we had both experienced injustices and mistreatment from authoritative figures we’ve had in the past. My partner claimed that he wasn’t the victim in the situation but was negatively affected by this. This argument connects back to my story because both coaches ended up abusing the power they had to benefit themselves and let the kids suffer.