Reality Versus Perception in the Kasdan Films, Grand Canyon and Mumford

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume explained two fundamental types of knowledge: Relations of ideas and matters of fact. The relation of ideas is by analyzing and pondering anoint the relations of ideas. The matter of fact is a rational nature that does not require the input of sense data such as economics, geometry, algebra, and arithmetic. Hume believes that from the past experiences, we can predict what is going to happen in the future. For example, when we we drop the pen, the pen falls. No matter how many times we repeat this action, we see the pen falling. So every time we drop the pen, we expect it to fall. In the ancient time, people do not know about the law of the physics and gravity. People observes and learn from the experiences to know how one action cause then another actions. They didn’t understand why, but it’s just a habit and what happened agin and agin. That’s why Hume thinks that we can not understand how the world works only by

Since the Grand Canyon has transitioned into a picturesque element over time, people often forget to examine the beauty of it for their own selves. Since they are unable to think for themselves, Percy goes on to saying, “Why it is almost impossible to gaze directly at the Grand Canyon, the thing as it is, has been appropriated by the symbolic complex, which has already been formed in the sightseer’s mind…Seeing the canyon is made even more difficult by what the sightseer does when the moment arrives, when sovereign knower confronts the thing to be known” (482). Percy makes evident of the problem with the symbolic complex. The symbolic complex is what is preventing people from thoroughly seeing the complete picture. The Grand Canyon is another prime example that if people were more interested in educating themselves before jumping into preconceptions, then it would be easier to appreciate the full

During the first few weeks of class we’ve gone through various texts in order to better our understanding of human knowledge. We have talked about Christianity St. Matthew “The Sermon on the Mount”, Plato and “The Allegory of the Cave”, “The Four Idols” of Sir Francis Bacon, Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”, and even Carl Jung and “The Structure of the Psyche”. All these texts may have been written in different eras and different places, but they have one thing in common, and that is their understandings of human nature and knowledge, and how they demonstrate to us epistemology (how we know) and metaphysics (what human beings know).

* We leave the world of belief and accept conceptual perceptions in a move toward understanding the “intelligible realm”.

Simon's trip down the mountain is his last because the group of boys act on instinct and brutally murder him. They “lept on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore” (page 153). This shows that instead of using their brains they are acting as untamed animals. The tribe demonstrates a wicked behavior in an unstable state of mind. Before Simon dies, he meets the lord of the flies and comes to a revelation. The lord says, “I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?” (page 143) which is very symbolic. The beast is not an animate object that one can kill and hunt but is a symbol of wickedness that exists in everyone of them. Jack’s tribe is too caught up in the situation that they release the inner beast in themselves

Simon’s spirituality has given him the ability to feel one with nature and find deeper meanings. Although the terrible events on the island have influenced the boys, Simon was able to rise above evil and remain his innate self. However, savagery and civilization together had destroyed Simon’s spiritual truth.

“When did our souls acquire the knowledge of them? Certainly not since we were born as men. Indeed no. Before that then? Yes” (Phaedo, 76c).

Doctrines might often be at odds with the objective, scientific, logical understanding of the universal Creation, but the scriptures are not bound by the limited awareness of those who see the world only through the eyes of their senses, where within the subjective, we experience both pain and pleasure as possessing substance and being.

Knowledge is based on what is, or truths. The only established truths are the forms. The forms represent true, eternal, unchanging, or facts. Knowledge stems from the idea of forms. One who has knowledge must understand the forms. Only a

This movie was very different from most of its predecessors in the sense that it challenged traditional narrative and technical elements of classic Hollywood cinema. One of the ways it bucked tradition was in in the fact that the

During a scene where Jack is recruiting members of Ralph’s tribe to join his hunting clan, Simon wanders off into the wilderness to search for the beast. On his quest, he discovers a parachutist who he thinks is a beast, but is actually someone who ejects from a plane during an unknown war in close proximity to the island. The parachutist is symbolic of how the boys lose touch with themselves and embark on violent behaviors to increase power over each other; the beast is a mere representation of them. As the boys deny this truth, “[they find] themselves eager to take a place in this demented but partly secure society. They [are] glad to touch the brown backs of the fence that [hems] in the terror and [makes] it governable” (Golding 86). The boys are given a false sense of security and reality as they develop their own sense of community and regulations. After Simon cuts the lines of the dangling parachutist off of the tree, he sends the soldier into the ocean. This is symbolic because it represents how the boys cut ties with the adult world and descend into violent behaviors. However, not long after, Simon is brutally killed by the wild beasts of Jack’s tribe. The boys begin to attack one another because “. . . evil is within them, however, they, too, war on one another” (Kelly and Barratt 2). Because Simon is deemed

Once the foundations of a building are undermined, anything built on them collapses of its own accord; so I will go straight for the basic principles on which all my former beliefs rested. Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once. (384)

facts of this world and not as the ancients held it in ancient philosophy. This

Wisdom,” revealed and natural theology. Revealed theology comes from such sources as the Bible and according to St. Thomas Aquinas

Countless philosophers, from centuries ago to modern times, have investigated the concept of inherited ideas. Some of the more daunting questions on the subject seem to be: From where do these ideas originate? Can we trust them? Do they serve as an objective foundation for the rest of our judgments, or are they in fact mere judgments themselves? Ludwig Wittgenstein addresses such questions in his written work On Certainty, and deduces that in some cases, an inherited idea is “so anchored [in me] that I cannot touch it” (no. 103). This paper will examine the definition of this idea and the argument that lies behind it, while also addressing the various objections that could be made to such an argument.