In James’ paper on “The Will to Believe”, he characterizes a belief as being alive, forced, and momentous. James explains that being alive means to actually be a genuine option. One example of this for me personally could be that if I were personally asked if I believed in aliens or fairies, it wouldn’t be actual, genuine options considering how I don’t even have concepts of either one; these would be considered dead. On the other hand, if someone were to ask me if I personally believed in God or Muhammed this would be more understandable. For these ideas or beliefs that are more understandable, these are alive.

When James describes forced he is saying that there is either you believe in God (or some form of a higher power) or not. There is no other option other than the two. One is forced to make a decision when asked a question like, “do you believe in God?”

The word “momentous” that James uses in his paper, he uses to describe something that one wouldn’t want to turn down, and if they did it would be of great disappointment. In the paper he uses the example of someone being invited to go to North Pole. “if I were Dr. Nansen and proposed to you to join my North Pole expedition, your option would be momentous; for this would probably be your only similar opportunity, and your choice now would either exclude you from the North Pole sort of immortality altogether or put at
least the chance of it into your hands. He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he tried and failed.” If Dr. Nansen turned down the opportunity to go to the North Pole, it would be momentous.

I believe that James’ ideas of belief kind of skew away from Clifford’s arguments on validity a little. In all of James’ paper, you don’t hear anything of validity or the argument of belief being based on validity and soundness. James’s view of belief is more on feelings and how that belief will make your life better by just believing in something.

Word Count: 359

Throughout Tolstoy’s paper, he describes three different ideas in which to measure the communication and infection that art gives between the artist and the audience. Tolstoy believes that art is all about infection and expression, which together is the union. The three different ways to measure the art is on the “greater or lesser individuality” or how unique the piece of art is, “greater or lesser clearness” (clearness being how well it communicates its feelings to the audience from the artist), and the third being ” on the sincerity of the artist” for the greater the sincerity the better the artist will be able to have more clarity and therefore infection. Another way that Tolstoy describes art is that it is natural. He believes that art happens to each of us naturally when we are able to connect ourselves with a certain piece of art. I do believe that this is one good way of evaluating art. Tolstoy’s view sounds beautiful and I love the way that he describes art as a union between the artist and audience. I have felt this in my own life with movies, books, and even music. But even though I do think that Tolstoy’s view is correct, I believe that there is more to art that just the connection. I believe that when people view art, it makes them feel more whole as a person, it makes them feel happier. Sometimes art is just the sense of feeling happy, to me. One example of this is when I view scenery or animals, I often just feel happy and fuller seeing these things. But when I view the scenery or animals, I feel a connection to God (which one would call the Creator of life if they so believed this to be true). A second example of how we could feel connected through art is through music. Throughout my life, music has carried me through my abusive struggles with my father and taught me to stay strong. My favorite artist is Mariah Carey and she has multiple songs that I would listen to through that period of time and it would make me feel like a regular person who’s life wasn’t worth nothing.

Word Count: 368

In Aristotle’s paper, “Poetics”, he mentions how poems are imitations in part one by “language, rhythm, and harmony”. As people he feels that we are drawn towards imitation. All of our art or poetry or theater is imitations of real life. Aristotle also feels that poems should be a form of tragedy rather than a comedy (the other type of narrative he provides to contradict tragedy with) or epic.

Aristotle poses a positive outlook on poetry. One of the ways I feel he does this is when he describes how poetry provides an outlook on the future and is not based on history. Tying in the poetry with tragedy, Aristotle mentions how “tragedy gives a feeling of necessity” to a poem. This helps to support his claim of using tragedy rather then other types of narrative. One part of tragedy that Aristotle tends to focus on is the fact that a poem should have a feeling of “pity and fear pleasures”. He feels as though one should feel these things when reading a poem.

In my opinion, Aristotle does provide a helpful look on art. I had never thought of looking at art as an imitation of life. A painting of a house would be an imitation of a house from physical life. This outlook helps me to also see why we may be so drawn to poetry or other forms of art; because of the possibility of what could be rather than what was or is. I had always though of art as just portraying pictures of things that they enjoy or like. As this is part of what art is, it is not fully art. I do really like Aristotle’s view of art. I also enjoy the part in where he believes that we should feel the pity and fear when reading the poem because poetry should be about emotion and conveying it in a good way.

Word Count: 318

In the game of TranscendenZ, the players never know when they are in reality or in the game, because of how realistic the game feels to them and how close it is to real life. In the same way, Plato’s view of reality states that those who are not living in the truth are never really aware that they are not. According to Plato, we will go through layers to get to the truth and reality. Like plato, the movie ExistenZ has many layers in it: the first layer being the reality or truth which is outside of the games (real life), the second layer is the game TranscendenZ which is the first game the players enter into, the third layer is the game that the players enter into after they are already in the first game. According to Plato, this would be like a Schizophrenic state such as watching a movie. The second layer would be the state that all non-scholars are in without knowing the truth. And finally the first layer would be reality.

In the movie, Ted Pikol comes back from the second game into the first game (him not knowing its still a game) and states in the bedroom, that he is not sure, after being to the other game, what is real and what is not. According to Plato, this is exactly how the man who went out of the cave felt at first when he went out to reality. Another scene of the movie where it relates to Plato’s view of reality is where Pikol and Geller were sitting in the restaurant and Pikol just finished making the bone gun. He then stood up and pointed the gun at Geller and she asked him why he was trying to shoot her. He stated that he wasn’t in control and that he had no choice. This is just like the men in the cave in Plato’s vision. The men had no choice but to believe what was put in front of them and so they did, but when someone came and told them it was wrong they got very angry, as did Geller.

Word count: 358

I believe that we are fooled by media and the movies that we watch, just like the men in the cave that were not able to turn their heads, but just watch what was put before them. In media we will normally just accept what we read or watch to be true and not dig more into it or try and gain more knowledge on the facts. In movies, the producers or the actors are all trying to convey a meaning that we just watch, and because we admire these actors/actresses/ producers, we follow along with what they say or do. I believe that sometimes we do believe that fiction is fact, especially if an “important” person says that it is real. I say “important” because different people are important to everyone. Just a few years ago, we were told that the American Dream was to get married, have a family, purchase a house, and have a dog. Even now I’m sure most of us have this in our minds as being the “perfect” lifestyle. But who made this concept up? Who put these ideas into our minds? Unfortunately, it’s the movies we watch, the books we read, the social media influences. More modern influences have been leaning more towards acceptance of LGBTQ and accepting everyone. What if tomorrow an “important” influence decides that it would be acceptable if everyone dated and had offspring with their cousins and animals. The big producers would then put this into movies and people would write books about the topics. We would all change our mindset just because they were saying it was alright, rather than looking at facts and seeing that that is not good for many reasons.

When looking at the question: “Is the physical world real” we need to look at what is the definition of “real” to you? To me “real” could mean I believe something is not just physical but also spiritual or conceptual. But according to the Webster Dictionary*, real means, “occurring or existing in actuality”. If you ask me, is the physical world real, I would say yes. But everyone’s answer could be different. I believe that the world is real because for me I am here, able to touch the earth and the people around me. The earth and people connect me to this world which makes it real to me.

*https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real word count: 395

1. Any beliefs you may hold influence your actions some way or another. (pg. 7)
2. Actions based on beliefs often cause harm or when trying to do good, is based off of bad reasons. (pg. 6)
3. Therefore, It is unjustified (wrong) to believe anything that is not based upon solid evidence. (pg. 7)

This argument is valid considering that the conclusion is based on both of the premises. But I don’t believe that this is a sound argument. I do think that beliefs that you hold have an influence on your actions as that you should have evidence for most things in life, but not everything that you believe in causes harm and those that don’t cause harm are not based on bad reasons most of the time. One practical significance that Clifford’s thesis has is that you should have evidence to back your claims, otherwise what is the point. We have to conduct experiments and study the things we wish to believe. If we do not do this we could “sink back into savagery”(pg 6). I feel as though this argument has the all-or-nothing fallacy. You would either have to fully agree with Clifford or you don’t agree with him at all. Because Clifford states that you must support ALL your claims and they CAN’T be based on your beliefs, he isn’t giving you a choice on being in the middle, where you would believe some things without support but everything else must have support. It either has to be one extreme or the other according to Clifford. After looking at the arguments over multiple times, this fallacy is about the only fallacy I found among this argument. Overall, this article was interesting to read and learn about a different way of viewing Clifford’s ideas and thoughts on how people shouldn’t believe just anything, which is the main idea I agreed with in his argument.

Word Count: 316

1. All baristas know how to fly; I am a barista; So I know how to fly.
2. Baristas can make both coffee and Frappuccino’s; Alec is a barista and know how to make coffee; So Alec can also make Frappuccino’s
3. Coffee is black in color; The liquid in the cup is black; Therefore the liquid is coffee.
4. Most Baristas know how to do latte art; Julio is a barista; Therefore Julio knows how to do latte art.

Word Count: 80

My life started in Jackson, CA with my mother, father, and one sister. At the age of two, my parents got a divorce, causing my mother to disappear out of my childhood and most of my adult life, leaving me with my mentally unstable father. My father struggled with mental illnesses for all his life, including when raising my sister and I. When I was younger (about 2-10 years old), he really just struggled with depression and Bi-Polar disorder. When I turned 11, and went into middle school, my father started showing signs of schizophrenia and his Bi-Polar disorder was getting worse and worse. Because of this my father would mentally and sometimes physically abuse me. My father was never able to keep down a stable job and would use his disability and unemployment checks for things other than what he needed to and would therefore cause us to be homeless and without shelter for days at a time. This would be my life until I went into high school, where CPS would get involved and send me into foster care.

My sister and I went into foster care at the same time and went from each home together. We were lucky enough to only have to go to two different homes and end up with a loving and caring family, whom are now my guardians and I consider my parents. The time in foster care was long and tedious and made me very confused about the world. When first entering foster care, the courts are required to make sure that none of the other family members, including the other parent whom the child has never even met, might be able to take care of the children. This happened to me when I first entered into foster care. The courts found my mother and made my sister and me stay with her every other weekend until they deemed it reasonable that she wasn’t fit to have custody. Along with seeing our mother, who I didn’t really even know, I was required to go to counseling as well as see my dad in supervised visitations. This was all very overwhelming but after all that and finally being able to settle in at my final foster parents home I was able to graduate high school with honors!

After graduating from high school, I transferred straight to a four year, private university in Redding, CA where I believed I knew what I wanted and where my path was leading me. I could not have been more wrong. After being in the university for just one year, I started making friends with the wrong people and doing things that I shouldn’t have been doing (ie.. drugs, alcohol, etc..). After being stuck in that lifestyle for about 3 years and dropping out of college, I knew I needed to get out of that area. I moved back home to Sacramento and started working and going to school at Sacramento State University. I still believed I knew what I wanted to do and where my path was heading…again. Unfortunately, I started doing the same things I had ran away from up in Redding. So, I left school, started a new job and just worked for about a year. I met my now current husband and he explained to me that school would be the best thing for me and that it wasn’t school that had been the problem all along, but in fact just me not knowing what I actually wanted from life.

So now, here I am, working at Starbucks full time as a supervisor, going to school full time at Sacramento City College, and trying to be the best wife I can be. I am still figuring out what all I want from life but as each day goes on, I get closer and closer to those answers.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.