I debated with myself for quite some time on what I would write this reflection on, because I couldn't decide on whether to discuss the absolutely mind boggling portions of this story (the inclusion of Alice in Wonderland and other bizarre stuff) or to discuss the philosophical/ philosopher lessons that it has recently taught. I decided to choose the later, and I am going to talk about the 19th century English Philosopher, Karl Marx. Karl Marx, a famous materialist philosopher, believed that everything, every issue and just the way society worked, revolved around economics. He saw that the way the economy ran was not the best or most fair way. Classes were always clashing, and he thought that workers and the capitalists were always in disagreements because the workers did not have a proper insentive. He thought that to improve this system, a workers revolution was needed, and if it was successful, Marxism could be implemented. Ultimately, he thought that if improvement was possible, the switch from the current, capitalist society, to a classless, socialist society was necessary. Many people believe that this system, or a system similar to it, would work well in a perfect world, or if it was just executed properly. I somewhat agree with this; socialism can work (ex. Sweden). A place where unemployment is virtually unheard of, where healthcare, education, and other social programs are affordable and affective, and where there is not a feeling of constant competition or stress between classes, mental standard of living should go up. Obviously, it isn't possible to just change our societies way of life, but maybe slightly implementing some of these ideas into capitalism could be great! Honestly, I don't know if Marxism would work, but I do think it is an interesting idea. I enjoyed this chapter and our discussion today in class, because it opened my eyes up to a different economic way of living and made me ponder how it would work in our world today.

Once again, much of the recent lessons we have learned in class and chapters we have read in the book connect to the real world in many ways. Specifically, I would say the movie "Inception", that we recently watched in class, contains many real world connections. Inception handles many philosophical ideas, what is reality?, how do we obtain our ideas?, is it appropriate for people to try to "play God"?, etc. The movie answers. Or furthers,  all of these real world questions in a pretty interesting way. On the issue of reality, the movie gave us multiple layers. The real world, multiple layers of dreams, and limbo all were forms of reality. As we saw, each layer had an effect on the person's life and some people had different perceptions of what the "real world" was. I believe the movie pretty clearly shows what the real reality is, but it does leave room to wonder. The movie also showed a way to explain knowledge or perception. Di Caprio's team in the film both planted and extracted ideas from others minds, that could shape the ways lives play out. Obviously this isn't possible in real life, but I do wonder if some of our ideas do come from dreams. The idea of playing God came up on multiple occasions throughout the movie. Di Caprio plays God by keeping the dream Mal locked up in his subconscious, the architects play God by designing full worlds in a dream state, and Di Caprio's team plays God by extracting and planting ideas. Each of these ideas seem slightly immoral because they can hurt somebody in one way or another, but it keeps you wondering if this is ethical or even possible. All in all, the movie was both very entertaining and educational on philosophy, and it contained many relations to the real world. Plus, it left us on quite the cliff hanger!

Recently in Sophie's World, I was quite interested with the chapter on Hume and Berkeley. These three great philosophers were known for being empiricists, people who believed that perception and knowledge is based off of experiences, memories, and senses. Hume was considered the greatest of all the empiricists, he was completley convinced that perception was based off of both impressions and ideas. His ideas and teachings were of great influence to another great philosopher, Kant. Berkeley, another great empiricist, was known for questioning everything, he questioned even more than other empiricists. After we learned about the philosophers, the novel gave us a huge twist. The Bjerkely chapter began with Hilde waking up on her birthday and doing some pretty usual everyday things. However, she ends up finding what she believes to be her birthday present from her father, a book he had written for her called "Sophie's World". That's where the epiphany came to me that Sophie really isn't real, she is just a character, and all the weird things that are happening to her are just jokes or connections from Hilde's father to Hilde. This chapter leaves you both confused and wanting more... is Sophie real? Is Hilde real? Are we real? Maybe the rest of the book will tell.

The Descartes and Spinoza chapters in Sophie's World very much connect to what we have been discussing in class, because the majority of our conversations have had to do with fate vs freewill, reality, or religion. These philosophers touch on all of the above criteria. In class, some people have had similar views to Descartes, where by thinking we are indeed real and also have a form of free will, and some have had more similarities to Spinoza by seeing us as a direct piece of God and having only God's plan to guide us through our lives. Some people in our class also agree with both of the two when it comes to doubting what we can't explain and believe if what we can with reason, and others have looked at it in more of a theological way, by depending on fate rather than reason. The majority of our class has also taken the side of Spinoza on the issue of the Bible. Spinoza was the first to truest critique the Bible, and I think that many of my class mates would agree with him. Our class is made up of many agnostics or atheists, and I believe that many people see the Bible to have little credibility. The two philosophers that we have most recently read about, directly connect to our class discussions and the real world! From what we have discussed in class and read in the book, I have started to think of many examples in the real world. People believing they have complete free will or thinking they follow God's path. People believing anything that they are told or that their senses tell them or people choosing to only believe reasonable and logical things. A lot of our discussions in class and a lot of the teachings of the two philosophers in the book directly relate to some of the groupings of people in today's society.

Most recently in Sophie's World, we read about the lives and ideas of two very important philosophers, Descartes and Spinoza. To begin, we learned that Descartes doubted much of the philosophical ways of thought that he had heard throughout his life and also realized that he really didn't know all that much himself. He set out to try and piece everything together through reason into one big, philosophical grouping. He tried to explain everything through reasoning and doubt anything that he couldn't. I like that idea, because if you have no evidence or reasoning for something, then there is no way you can believe in it completley, there must be some degree of doubt. Through his work, Descartes created something that brings him the most fame. I think, therefore I am. While he was trying to discover the reasoning for everything, he realized that by thinking, he didn't need to doubt his own existence. According to Descartes, there is one thing we all can know for sure, by thinking about what to write for our blogs or thinking about what I have written here, we all really exist. Next we read about another famous philosopher, one who admired Decartes, Spinoza. Spinoza agreed with much of what Descartes, however he did not completely agree with his ideas of mind versus matter. Spinoza focused much of his ideas on God and the Bible. He believed that our ability to think did not make us free, but that it was just a piece of God himself through us. He believed that God controlled everything and also that we should be able to critique the Bible. His ideas on this matter brought lots of hatred upon him from almost everybody, including his own family!! Finally, where Descartes thought that our mind brought us freedom, Spinoza thought that only God had freedom, but that did not mean we couldn't still achieve happiness.

The chapter that I alluded to in my last post, and what we have been learning about in class, tremendously relates to the real world in a multitude of ways. What I am referring to is religion. In class, we have discussed whether there is a God, we have discussed different philosophers arguments for if there is or isn't a God, and whether we have fate or free will. Plus, as a talked about in the last blog post, the book has talked about different religions basis' and cultures. This connects to the real world for a few reasons, one being much of he world follows a religion and another is whether there is a God or not had been one of the biggest debates our world has faced for centuries. This arguement can rile many people up because some are very passionate about their religions and some are very passionate about scientific explanations for everything. Religion is one of the most "popular" thing on Earth. Tons of people believe in some sort of higher power and it can shape the way many people live their lives (as we see in the cultures we learn about in the book). Without religion, our world would probably agree on a lot more honestly, and we would of never had many of the great battles or stories of our history.

From what we have recently read in Sophie's World, I have chosen to talk about the two cultures chapter. A big portion of this chapter taught us about a few of the monotheistic religions (those who believe and worship one God), including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I enjoyed this chapter, because although I do fall into one of these categories (Christianity), I didn't know many of the basics of cultures  of these religions. Something that I thought was very cool is that all of these religions some what connect in a mysterious manner. For example, the Jews prophesied of a future messiah years before the birth of Jesus Christ (the Christian messiah). It shows you that even though hear religions do have some different beliefs and cultures, they still do have stuff in common. A connection that the teachings of this chapter to the story going on is uncertainty/mystery. You find a lot of uncertainty and mystery in religion (lots of unanswered question and some wonders or doubts), just like we see in the letters Sophie is recieving from Alberto. She is still very uncertain on what is going on and on what a lot of what he is trying to tell her. All in all, I enjoyed this chapter, because I found the lesson interesting and I enjoyed on how it ties into the story line!