Philosophy articles

Writing and Using a A Personal Mission Statement (04/27/2012)
... Our meaning comes from within. Again, in the words of Frankl, "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible." Personal responsibility, or proactivity, is fundamental to the first creation. Returning to the computer metaphor, Habit 1 says "You are the programmer....

The Way We See the Problem is the Problem (08/16/2010)
... The way we see the problem is the problem. Look again at some of the concerns that introduced this article, and at the impact of personality ethic thinking. I've taken course after course on effective management training. I expect a lot out of my employees and I work hard to be friendly toward them and to treat them right. But I don't feel any loyalty from them....

Which Are The Three Kinds of Assets (08/16/2010)
... It simply wasn't effective. In our quest for short-term returns, or results, we often ruin a prized physical asset -- a car, a computer, a washer or dryer, even our body or our environment. Keeping P and PC in balance makes a tremendous difference in the effective use of physical assets. It also powerfully impacts the effective use of financial assets. How often do people confuse principal with interest? Have you ever invaded principal to increase your standard of living, to get more golden eggs? The decreasing principal has decreasing power to produce interest or income....

Expanding your Circle of Influence (08/15/2010)
... Their discussion was all very sophisticated, very articulate, as if they were trying to help the situation. But they did it endlessly, absolving themselves of responsibility in the name of the president's weaknesses. "You can't imagine what's happened this time," someone would say. "The other day he went into my department. I had everything all laid out....

Making and Keeping Commitments (08/14/2010)
... By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods. The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness. Knowledge, skill, and desire are all within our control. We can work on any one to improve the balance of the three. As the area of intersection becomes larger, we more deeply internalize the principles upon which the habits are based and create the strength of character to move us in a balanced way toward increasing effectiveness in our lives....

Principles of Growth and Change (08/13/2010)
... At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth. In all of life, there are sequential stages of growth and development. A child learns to turn over, to sit up, to crawl, and then to walk and run. Each step is important and each one takes time. No step can be skipped....

What it Means to `Begin with the End in Mind` (08/10/2010)
... It is possible to be busy -- very busy -- without being very effective. People often find themselves achieving victories that are empty, successes that have come at the expense of things they suddenly realize were far more valuable to them. People from every walk of life -- doctors, academicians, actors, politicians, business professionals, athletes, and plumbers -- often struggle to achieve a higher income, more recognition or a certain degree of professional competence, only to find that their drive to achieve their goal blinded them to the things that really mattered most and now are gone. How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and, keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most. If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster....

Identifying Roles and Goals (08/05/2010)
... In the name of professional success, they may neglect the most precious relationships in their lives. You may find that your mission statement will be much more balanced, much easier to work with, if you break it down into the specific role areas of your life and the goals you want to accomplish in each area. Look at your professional role. You might be a salesperson, or a manager, or a product developer. What are you about in that area? What are the values that should guide you? Think of your personal roles -- husband, wife, father, mother, neighbor, friend....

The Human Mind (01/17/2010)
... It consists of an impossible task, discuss with an advantage over different types of mind without referring to the various factors that come to form the different types of human beings. Psychologists used to think that the spirit was, simply, brain function, just as the bile is a product of the liver and the breathing function of the lungs. We now know that it requires much more than two lungs for breathing (also a nose, trachea, some chest muscles, diaphragm and a regulating center). We, likewise, that the brain is only one of the organs of spirit, that is only part of the mechanism that assists individuals in their adaptations. The psyche depends to some extent, the storage of memories in the brain, but also depends on sensory nerve endings in the skin of the extremities and motor nerve, muscle, depends on the muscles and to some extent, all physical structures body....

PSYCHOLOGICAL ATTACKS ON GAY SEXUAL CULTURE (11/15/2008)
... Some gay men found that their profound anxiety and fears sometimes interfered with their ability to adopt low-risk sexual practices. Some even discussed in therapy sessions how nerve-wracking it was for them not to be able to reduce their number of sexual partners or adopt safer sex precautions, even while knowing that it was precisely the sexual nature of HIV transmission that made them afraid and anxious. When talk therapy alone did not help, a referral to a psychopharmacologist for a prescription of antianxiety or antidepression medication sometimes was appropriate. Gay men who had used sex as a central way to meet other men often found it difficult to change their patterns of seeking anonymous sex because they did not feel able to learn or comfortable with alternative ways to meet men, to socialize, and have their needs for intimacy and sex met. I reminded those clients that it was not sex with an anonymous partner or even many partners that placed them at risk for spreading HIV, but engaging in high-risk sex acts....

Scepticism in Modern Philosophy (05/17/2008)
... than to catch philosophers of this kind by the words they speak’. It is Descartes (1596–1650), however, who is generally considered to be the figure who brings scepticism most fully into the modern philosophical world, in his quest to find a secure basis for a theory of knowledge. He subjected all his beliefs to scrutiny, seeking to locate that elusive starting point from which he could then build outwards with assurance. This proved to be the famous proposition, cogito ergo sum, ‘I think therefore I am.’ The one thing that Descartes could never doubt was that he was thinking, even if the truth of the content of his thoughts posed more problems for him....

Scepticism in Islamic Philosophy (05/17/2008)
... From our point of view it is unfortunate that Al-Ghazali’s scepticism ultimately was overcome by his religious belief. Whereas for Pyrrhonians dogmatism was the ‘disease’ to be feared, for Al-Ghazali that was scepticism. He speaks of God having ‘cured me of this malady’ in his autobiographical work Deliverance from Error (c.1100), after a prolonged period in which he felt himself to be ‘a sceptic in fact though not in theory nor in outward expression’. Al-Ghazali then goes on to denounce philosophy in the same work, dismissing the claims of the various schools on the grounds that ‘unbelief affects them all’, and that their influence on Muslims is ‘baneful and mischievous’....

Scepticism in Contemporary Philosophy (05/17/2008)
... The attempt to meet, or even to understand, the sceptical challenge to our knowledge of the world is regarded in some circles as an idle academic exercise, a wilful refusal to abandon outmoded forms of thinking in this new post-Cartesian age. Stroud, as we shall see below, strongly disagrees with this negative assessment. Yet the anti-sceptical impulse is nevertheless commendable enough in its way, being concerned to prevent philosophy from collapsing into arguments about the grounds for argument, in which case the subject is not addressing all the other problems in the world around us – problems of ethics and politics, for example. Finding flaws in the sceptical position is also a way of arresting a slide into relativism – something that any socially conscious mainstream philosopher is generally keen to avoid, with its implications of an anarchic ‘anything goes’ approach to ethics and politics (a charge frequently made against the super-sceptics). Hyperbolic doubt in particular comes in for very close scrutiny, with its basic premises being strongly challenged....

Classical Scepticism (05/15/2008)
... they still provide the subject of epistemology with some of its most cunning puzzles and most obdurate problems’.5 Pyrrhonism is to be considered, therefore, more than just a historical curiosity. It provides an extremely useful point of reference for rethinking the project of scepticism in the twenty-first century. This is particularly so since, as Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes point out, Pyrrhonism’s emphasis was very firmly on belief: ‘The ancient sceptics did not attack knowledge: they attacked belief’ (whereas in modern scepticism it is often the opposite).6 As it is precisely belief that we are concerned to call into question too, it is appropriate for us to link up as much as we can with the classical sceptical tradition....

What Are Examples of Philosophy of Adult Education (04/02/2007)
... The following sections present three of the philosophies that underlie most corporate training. We illustrate them by showing how the topic “food safety” would be taught in each. As we will discuss later, few programs purely embody one strategy, but the examples for the following three philosophies have clear leanings. Progressive Adult Education Progressive adult education is the raison d’etre for training in many organizations. This philosophy emphasizes vocational and utilitarian training that betters the individual, society, and the organization....

Why Instructional Designers Should Study Philosophies of Education (03/25/2007)
... Different approaches embody different thoughts. The structured approach just described, and frequently used in technical training, differs substantially from one in which learners are thrown right into a situation and have to figure out the concepts on their own. An example of this is Anesoft’s Bioterrorism Simulator, which helps physicians, nurses, and other health care providers improve their response to biological and chemical attacks. Learners are asked to treat “simulated patients” and, in the process, must make a diagnosis and administer the most appropriate treatment. To help learners as they encounter this simulation, the course provides an online help system....