Week 8 Lecture Summary

The Concept of:

Virtual Philosophy

This week's lecture was on "Virtual Philosophy". I managed to stay listening the whole time to this lecture but it was extremely difficult because I really didn't understand what he was talking about. His enthusiasm made you want to listen and follow along, but yeah, definitely over my head. Although a majority of it was over my head, I did understand some aspects of those.

Plato was bought up numerous times (pictured right >>) which I find incredible. I personally love the writings of Aristotle more so than Plato, but the fact that centuries later we still use their theories, philosophies and texts as guidelines and explanations today, shows how timeless and brilliant their work was.

The lecturer said that we can say that philosophy was created out of poetry. This can be see through the works of many Greek philosophers. When studying the texts it is seen that they "thread together".

Parmenides, another philosopher said that "whatever is, is". This particular philosophy has been passed down the centuries as people now quote it as "whatever will be, will be".

But back to Plato. One of his philosophies were that stuff is there, but it has different appearences. For example: A chair. But there are different types of chairs. And does a park bench classify as a chair? We sit on it. So it must be?

We also went through the "Allegory of the Cave". I found a website that helped explain it in clearer, simpler terms. http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm

I won't deconstruct the allegory all over again, but basically it is just an easy explaination as to what we do with the concept of reality.

One last point I found really interesting was anxiety. I suffer from anxiety at time to time when I feel I cannot handle a situation. But really what the lecturer said is very true. Anxiety is the fear of being afraid of fear. He said how people need to treat the reality in our heads and manipulate the material message to another.

To me as interesting as philosophy is, questioning the world and all it's antics, is just....stupid and only leading to trouble.