That Makes Sense.

Reason, cause, motive, basis, grounds, rational, explanation. The way that modern science has taught us how to view the world in many ways is to have a reason behind what we do, what we know, what we can prove, etc. As a young child you grow up learning through reason and experiments of what hurts and what makes you happy, what is something that brings positive reinforcement and so on.   The Cartesian in all of us says things of the nature that can prove something and or that has a good ground which therefore leads to a convincing argument. If you think about it, when someone tells a story, or teaches you new information, or simply gives you a piece of fact, what makes you believe it and what leads you to sorting that in your head as fact. Science (as we know it) a collection or evidence, that goes along with guesses and experiments until reasoning is developed..


On the other hand where things get tricky Descartes comes in a begins this explanation of mind and body. The dualism that he makes clear of these two things as separate. I think that a good example of something that comes into play with reasoning and logic versus the absolute truth or beliefs is simply religion. Like the example or Teressa which we discussed in class, I find it very hard to believe that the cause of this was 'jesus' or 'god'. Although I am a faithful person myself and I have gone to a catholic church since I was a little girls, my reasoning and logic kicks in more so than the idea that there is an over powering god who controls many things. It's similar to Descartes idea that there are two separate things that need to work together. Although mind and body can be combined although two different things, there are also possibilities to ponder in this world that don't work as well as the mind and body together. This is the point I really took away from our weeks work during class.

An example of this is found in peoples beliefs about prayer and other sort of religious activity. Beliefs should be a key word in this idea. When someone is brought up in a society believing in a high power than where does reason come in? It's a conflicting idea. If a god is above and controlling everything than things that we want to make sense of sometimes don't line up. If prayer is suppose to be something you do to be thankful and ask for needs, and it doesn't pan out the way a person plans where does modern science versus religion come in. If there is a plan for everything than why do we question anything? If there is someone who knows what they are doing why do we try so hard to prove points that have no other purpose. For me this is a hard concept to really, completely grasp. There really is no good middle point. One can either believe in a god who controls our universe etc. etc. or they can believe in reason and rationality and explanations for everything that happens in this life. I think we would all like to believe that there may be some gray spot that everyone could agree on, but in this case that is not a possibility.