Wednesday, October 31, 2007

What I feel to be the goal of life(for myself)

To Learn about my surroundings and Learn something from everyone I meet. Always Learn and feel that I am being righteous in everything I do. I believe that being righteous is one of the keys on the keychain that lead to running a happy life. Self-expansion and growth are important and healthy as well, because they promote a feeling of accomplishment and help to make an individual independent. They help to further the experience of life, making yourself feel good is key to making others feel good too. I want to continually change and advance instead of planting my feet and sprouting my roots too soon. I want to grow instead of setting my goals and obligations, eliminating any room for new situations and free choices. I want to let life take ahold of me and bring anything it has in my path forward.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Perception and Memory of Facts

When I percieve something with one of my senses, whether I see it through my eyes or smell it through my nose or anything along the lines of sensing something, I believe what my senses are telling me. And in believing what my senses are telling me I understand that which I percieve through my senses to be true and therefore I label my personal understanding of that as a fact. That which I interpret through my senses then gets saved in my memory (at least most of the time it does) and I can recall it any time then thereafter. One thing I find interesting is the way in which these facts are recalled. Usually I remember a fact because I am reminded of it through my senses. I sense the smell of lavender perfume and I recall how my mother used to put dry lavender perfume on my forehead when I went to sleep at night to "keep away nightmares" and then I had nightmares probably because I was thinking about not having nightmares. But this is really just a personal fact that belongs to me that is more of just an experience that lies in my memory that I turned into a fact, because I know that it is true. A better example of a fact recalled by memory is how the first time I put my hand on something hot enough to burn me, I experienced an unpleasant, shocking pain on my skin that left a welt. Now I know from my memory and senses that if I happened to place my hand on something this hot that I would experience something very unpleasant and painful and it is something that I would not do on my own will because it is a known fact (in my mind and in the mind of others with this familiar experience) that I do not like it and I will get hurt.
Dear Mark,
Let me know if this is not what you were trying to get out of us. I tend to tear myself apart when I start thinking about these philosophical questions and upon my attempt to decifer them I get all jambled up inside.

Monday, October 1, 2007

What makes a fact a fact?

Facts tend to be information about a subject that is generally agreed upon by the general population of humans. Or a fact could be the about the subject itself and how it came to be a part of a language. For example, a rat is called a rat because the English language calls it that. A generally agreed upon fact about the rat could be that it has 4 legs and is in the rodent family of mammals.