Merrick's Theoretical Analysis

Lastly, his fourth argument assumes that things can be created by matter therefore if other things say otherwise it would be disregarded (Paley,

in this world, and they are effects derived from a cause. The effects in turn

According to Freudian theory Myra must have experienced neurotic anxiety in the presence of her husband’s “authority” as she previously must have experienced unconscious feelings of destruction against her parents because of fear of punishment. This leads her to exaggerate her cleanings and frequently portray herself as a martyr who does so much for others and asks so little for herself, when in reality she usually over sees the cleaning and tells others what to do, and has her husband or children help her. This same neurotic anxiety makes her aggressive towards her neighbor. Once grass went flying into her garden from her neighbor’s while mowing and as a result Myra threw a fit and did not talk to the

Mercutio: I believe a song to describe Mercutio and his personality “Livin La Vida Loca”- Ricky Martin. This song is a good fit for Mercutio because it is about partying and running around much like Mercutio is portrayed to enjoy to do. One of the lyrics I feel like that applies is “Upside down inside out” because the way Mercutio parties he must have is life turned upside down and inside out every once in awhile. Another lyric that may fit is “Woke up in New York City in a funky cheap hotel” not necessarily because Mercutio would wake up in New York City but because to part as often as him someone would have to wake up in a place that is unfamiliar to them.

Have you ever wondered about the world beyond its original state? How we know that electricity produces a light bulb to light up or causes the sort of energy necessary to produce heat? But in the first place, what is electricity? Nor have we seen it and not we encountered it; however, we know what it can do, hence its effects. To help us better understand the notion of cause and effect, David Hume, an empiricist and skepticist philosopher, proposed the that there is no such thing as causation. In his theory, he explained the deliberate relationship between the cause and effect, and how the two factors are not interrelated. Think of it this way: sometimes we end up failing to light a match even though it was struck. The previous day, it lit up, but today it did not. Why? Hume’s theory regarding causation helps us comprehend matters of cause and effect, and how we encounter the effects in our daily lives, without the cause being necessary. According to Hume, since we never experience the cause of something, we cannot use inductive reasoning to conclude that one event causes another. In other words, causal necessity (the cause and effect being related in some way or another) seems to be subjective, as if it solely exists in our minds and not in the object itself.

The argument also indulges in an infinite regression. It assumes that a transcendent god created the entire universe. However, it fails to account for what created the god. As stated in the lecture slides, a committee of lesser beings may have created the god, but that begs the question about who created the committee. One could object to this idea and believe that god has always existed, transcending time and reality itself. Once again, however, this logic is just as applicable to the universe. The universe is as capable of existing forever as a god is.

That argument contradicts itself, because it uses itself as a cause for existence in its premise, when it is proving the concept of cause being a necessity. Therefore, it begs the question to prove cause and effect by relying on the conclusion to prove the premise. The ideas of cause and effect cannot vary too far from actual impressions of the mind or ideas from the memory. We must first establish the existence of causes before we can infer effects from them. We have only two ways of doing that, either by an immediate perception of our memory or senses, called impressions, or, by an inference from other causes, called thoughts. For example, “A man finding a watch or any other machine in a desert island would conclude that there had once been men in that island” (160). Regardless of the source of the impression, the imagination and perceptions of the senses are the foundation for the reasoning that traces the relation of cause and effect. The inference that we draw from cause to effect does not come from a dependence on the two concepts to each other or from a rational objective look at the two. One object does not imply the existence of any other. All distinct ideas are separable, as are the ideas of cause and effect. The only way that we can infer the existence of one object from another is through experience. Contiguity and succession are not sufficient to make us pronounce any two objects to be cause and effect, unless we

Fredrick, I enjoyed reading your discussion post and found it to be very well thought-out. Right off the bat your argument resonated with me. Your statement of when you “know better, you do better” was pivotal. After learning about the name of Washington’s NFL team, I talked with my son whom is nine years old about his Redskin’s blanket, which I purchased for him because he likes the team. Nevertheless, I will be the first to admit that I am embarrassed by my stupidity and for the part I played in supporting racial slur. Needless to say the choice was made not keep the blanket or any other sport related caricature that trivialize race of people.

Naturalists hold onto the idea that there is No Prime Mover, leaving theists to beg the question, what caused the first “spark?” The theory of cause and effect is clearly definitive and thus can either be true or false. And if there is no first cause, then this theory does not hold up creating internal logical inconsistency.

Objections to this argument state there is a contradiction within the argument. “Since nothing can move itself, an object can only move if its potential to move is activated by something outside of it. For example, water has the potential to freeze if the air temperature lowers enough to act upon the water and freeze it. But water can’t just turn into ice by itself. Likewise, the air that freezes water has a potential to become colder if something else acts upon it (trenthorn.com)”. Something that has potential to move can be actually moved.

On the other hand, Anscombe disagrees with Hume, and believes that we can, and do observe causation. Anscombe uses examples of crushing, chewing, pushing, and such to illustrate that we do perceive causation. For example, if person A holds a sheet of paper in their hand, and then begins to crush the sheet of paper, and then later we see the sheet of paper crumbled; Anscombe argues that this is enough evidence to show that we do perceive causation, because we can see the causing of the sheet of paper to crumble. Another example is of person A cutting a sheet of paper; Anscombe would argue that it is evident that we observe the causing of the sheet of paper be divided. In addition, Ansombe add that we can perceive causation by tracing an effect to its cause. For example, of the cutting of a sheet of paper by person A, one can traced the effect (sheet of paper cut in half) to its cause (person A cutting the sheet of paper). Therefore, Anscombe claims that we do perceive causation. Anscombe believes that this evidence is sufficient to prove that we not only perceive “contiguity” and “succession” of events, but the cause of events.

In Martha Stout’s essay “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday”, she discusses how a person who has suffered a traumatic experience is most likely to dissociate their individual self from that situation and block it from their mind completely. This form of a solution allows the person to forget the experience and not feel the pain. In “Immune to Reality” Daniel Gilbert describes how every human being contains a psychological immune system, which works to shield us from horrible experiences that threaten our happiness. When experiencing a traumatic event, the psychological immune system responds by “cooking up the facts”, meaning taking the facts of the situation and turning the negative aspects of it into positive views. At first

David Lynch, a man who made the life of John Merrick spread through the world. John Merrick was an unfortunate soul being cursed with the deformity of his body. Through his whole life was beaten and taken advantage by a man who ran a carnival. One lucky day Dr. Frederic Treves found him. And turned his whole life upside down. We remember from the story Frankenstein the Daemon. Who’s life was and endless question, who is my family, who am I? We see this in the quote by Glenn Erickson, “The monster in this case suffers like Frankenstein’s creation, cast out as unclean… he blooms into a vengeful killer, but into a beautiful soul.”

The second argument is for the notion that the existence of God can be demonstrated. It states that everything has a cause. He claims that by using the theory of cause and effect we can demonstrate the existence of God. If we say that every effect has a cause, we can go further and further to infinity. But because of our own logic, we know that this is not true. We know that it must end somewhere. That somewhere is a first cause, and that cause is God. This is very similar to the idea of the unmoved mover. He goes on to say that through the effects, we can demonstrate that God does exist, but we cannot know what God is like.

A cosmological argument focuses on the notion of causation and that everything in the universe including us must have an initial cause, for nothing comes from nothing. Thomas