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Philosophy (Epistemology: Studies the nature and scope of knowledge.…

- - - - Cogito Ergo Sum: I think, therefore I am. Of all things to be doubted, the fact that Descartes is a thinking thing, means that he exists.
      - Senses can be deceiving, so you cannot rely on them as sources for knowledge. (Hearing things that are not there, seeing someone you think you know but winds up being a stranger, food tastes different when sick, etc.)
    - - Descartes was a rationalist
  - - - Tabula Rasa (Blank Slate): All the knowledge we have does not come preloaded in our consciousness. Instead we develop our knowledge through the experience of our senses
        
        Existence Precedes Essence
        
        Jean-Paul Sartre(1905-1980): The Humanism Of Existentialism
        
        To Choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all. pg 37
        
        And every man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?" pg 39
        The existentialist will never consider man as an end because he is always in the making. 61
        
        Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. pg 36
        Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life. pg 47
        
        Essence is defined by performative acts.
        
        In order to get any truth about myself, I must have contact with another person. The other is indispensable to my own existence, as well as to my knowledge about myself. This being so, in discovering my inner being I discover the other person at the same time, like a freedom placed in front of me which thinks and wills only for or against me... Intersubjectivity; this is the world in which man decides what he is and what others are. pg 52
        
        Intersubjectivity helps to create an identity. If The same argument that Beauvoir and Butler makes for Gender, can also be applied to Race.
        
        W.E.B. Dubois (1868-1963): The Souls Of Black Folk
        
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        Charles Mills (Born 1951): "But What Are You Really?" The Metaphysics of Race
        
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        there is also dishonesty if I choose to state that certain values exist prior to me; it is self-contradictory for me to want them and at the same time state that they are imposed on me.
        pg 57 We may define more precisely the responsibility of the for-itself if to the earlier quoted statement, "there are no innocent victims," we add the words, "We have the war we deserve." pg 66
        
        there is no non-human situation... the situation is mine because it is the image of my free choice of myself, and everything which it presents to me is mine in that this represents me and symbolizes me. pg 64
      - Consciousness makes personal Identity: the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions, that is self to itself nnow and so will be the same self as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come; and would be by distance of time, or change of substance.
      - Believes that since existence precedes essence, all knowledge is derived from sensory experience
- - - - Natural Law Theory: Ethics based on the assumption that God created the universe according to a well ordered plan
        
        Part of God's plan is to allow humans to do good, so he gave humans preloaded information to determine what is morality which is a concept that is separate from God's command. Instinct shows us the basic goods, and reason allows us to derive natural law from them.
        
        Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): The Metaphysics of Morals
        Rejected the notion that God came up with morals and it is only through reason they can be derived.
        
        Hypothetical Imperatives: Commands you should follow if you want something. Based on instinct.
        
        Categorical Imperatives: Commands you must follow, regardless of your desires. Moral obligations are derived by pure reason.
        
        Universal Law: Act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.
        
        Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end, and never as a mere means.
        
        Utilitarianism: The antithesis of deontological ethics where intent does not matter and an action has moral value based on its consequences
        
        John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): Utilitarianism
        
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        The only thing unqualifiedly good is a good will. An action has moral value if performed from duty and not in accord with duty.
    - - The well-worn coin of "superior orders" versus "acts of the state" were handed back and forth; they had governed the whole discussion
      - he had distorted it to read: Act as if the principle of your actions were the same as that of the legislator or of the law of the land-- "the categorical imperative of the Third Reich" pg 136
      - Banality Of Evil: The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. pg 276
- - - - It can be interpreted that the ones who walk away from Omelas are free spirits because they do not want to ascribe the system established by the "herd"
- - - - This complicates Sartre's idea as Anwar surrounds himself with a bunch of yes-men, who allow him to make his own reality that is skewed from what the actual truth about Anwar is.
      - In a way, Anwar is acting as an existentialist who creates his own reality about his past to define his existence; albeit a false one.
- - - - taking away the agency Chris has to make his own identity brings back notions of the superiority/inferiority relations between genders/races.
  - - - Walter and Georgina might have all of these things, but does the consciousness gain the ancestry via the transfer? They probably gain experience over time as the race, but they could have recently transferred which is why they come across as unnatural.
      - the performance the invading consciousness puts on comes across as unnatural because of the way they view what it means to be African American, seeing as the consciousness is white.