Philosophy - Free

Philosophy Free Will vs Determinism Essay The dialogue between philosophers over the existence of free will versus the inevitability of determinism is a debate that will always exist. The discussion centers around the true freedom of humans to think and act according to their own judgment versus the concept that humans are intrinsically bound by the physical laws of the universe. Before I enter this chicken and the egg debate I need to quantify my terms: Free will is defined by the great philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas as â€Å"vis electiva† or free choice. It is the ability of man to contemplate and judge the effects of the actions he is about to take. †¦But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. † (Aquinas. Suma Theologica) Determinism is a complex notion but is best described by David Hume as the notion that something cannot come from nothing and that all actions have causes preceding them. I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself, but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself. And that therefore, when first a man hath an appetite or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appetite nor will, the cause of his will, is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing. So that whereas it is out of controversy, that of voluntary actions the will is the necessary cause, and by this which is said, the will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not, it followeth, that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes, and therefore are necessitated. (Hume. Liberty and Nessessity. ) Philosophy and world religion alike were born of the same origins. Each of the two ancient disciplines arose from the quest for the answers to life’s ominous questions. These human questions, archetypical to people of all geographic locations; where did we come from; why are we here; where do we go when we die; unite us as a race. It is no coincidence that each religion and theology from all four corners of the earth tackles these black holes of human logic. Each religion carves their own individual explanations of these unanswerable questions into their core belief systems, each one centrally different than others. However, they all share one common thought; each shares a belief in an afterlife determined by the choices made in life. Free will is the common denominator in all world religions, because all share the essential concept of morality. The widespread acceptance of the concept of morality implies that there is a choice to be had at each and every juncture or life. The choice comes from recognition of good and evil. For good and evil to exist, then there has to be the ability to decipher between the two and also decide to accept one over the other. The existence of morality alone proves that free will exists, because without the freedom to choose right or wrong in any given situation there would be no qualitative measure of the â€Å"rightness† or â€Å"wrongness† of ones actions. David Hume comments on the origin of morality and its place in our everyday decision making processes, â€Å"Only when you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation† (Hume.  Treatise of Human Nature). In other words, there are no outside stimuli that can decipher good from evil; the line can only be drawn by internal thought. Hume was a naturalist in that his vision of the world and therefore stance of philosophy was based directly through the experiences of the senses. His stance on many issues directly originated from his ability to experience it with the five senses, and on the subject of morality he takes exception. Even he recognizes the existence of morality in everyday life, even though it cannot be explained through the lens of the senses. It would seem that morality’s acceptance must therefore prove that free will exists, but there is one essential school of thought yet to weigh on this topic; science. Science was the latest bloomer of the three major disciplines of existential explanation and in the post modern era is becoming more and more popular. As the world becomes further secularized and the reaches of scientific logic continue to exceed their grasp, many of the world’s intellectuals identify â€Å"truth† on a scientific scale. Science does not support the theory of morality, because it can’t be proven to exist. The notion of â€Å"free-will†, something which world religion and philosophies alike recognize as a fundamental part of our human anatomy, is called into question in a few simple and logical ways. Science supports the theory of determinism as the only logical explanation of the unfolding of the actions of our lives. First off, science has recently developed the discipline known to us as physics, in which the laws of the universe have been defined. In the short time in which humans have been graced by the scientific understanding of the laws of the universe, human kind has yet to fully step back and contemplate the magnitude of this discovery. In generations past, humans believed that we were made special with â€Å"free will†, but now we know that like all things in the universe we are subject to the physical laws. This is a huge step forward in rational thinking because it allows us to understand that our previously God given concept of â€Å"free will† was really a result of a lack of understanding of the deterministic laws of the universe. For instance a law as simple and commonly accepted as â€Å"gravity† challenges the idea of free will. Gravitational pull determines that no matter the size of an object, once separate from the surface of the earth will be dragged back down at the same force every time. This is a simple concept that we take for granted, but it works in the free will v. determinism argument. We are ruled by gravity, and therefore all of our lives activities answer to it. We can’t choose to jump off a building and float in the air because we’ll be pulled back to the ground to our imminent deaths. We can’t choose to stay younger and keep our skin tight to our faces because gravity’s long-term effect causes our skin to droop down towards the ground. The choices I just listed may seem farfetched to some, however, if we examine the notion that we have â€Å"free will† in the empirical sense of the word we see that not all of our decisions are controlled by us, and that we fall victim to the tyrannical rule of the physical laws of the universe. We aren’t truly â€Å"free† to create our own actions in life. Albert Einstein offers a particularly apt synopsis, â€Å"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. (Albert Einstein) The rule of physical law aside, which hinders us from truly being â€Å"free† to choose our own actions in life, is a much more simple scientific argument that dispels the notion of free will. For example: Say a 20 year old man murders another man in cold blood. They have no affiliation, no prior knowledge of who each other is, or reason to dislike each other. Man A walks up to random Man B and shoots and kills him. Was this action of Man A a result of â€Å"free will†? To examine the notion fully you need to look at his action coming from two sources. Either Man A was born with the moral flaw to allow himself to find killing another human acceptable, or that Man A was influenced during the course of his life by interactions and actions of others and came to that conclusion based on his own experience. There is no other explanation for Man A to willingly choose to open fire on Man B and kill him. If we look at the first option, Man A’s natural moral compass was skewed, allowing for him to conceive the notion that killing another is okay. This speaks to the determinant nature of our chemical makeup. Its possible his DNA made a mistake coding somewhere and he developed overtime and understood that killing another is â€Å"wrong† or maybe that his entire sense of â€Å"right from wrong† was skewed inside his mind. This would lead Man A to lead a life normally on the outside, and yet without regard for consequence, open fire on another man and kill him as easily as he could have held a door for him. This is the idea that he naturally had the capacity to kill, and that he could not control it. Eventually one of his animalistic impulses would finally stick and he’d be in the right place at the right time, and that it was only a matter of time until he killed someone. If you don’t subscribe to that theory and believe that he chose to kill Man B that day, try and consider that the results will still be pre-determined. If Man A killed Man B due to his choice, then his own â€Å"free will† and judgment that he finds reprehensible to kill another man can’t be attributed to truly â€Å"free† will of choice. Not every human kills others as part of their natural lifestyle, as they might kiss or mate with another. In fact a very small percentage of people in the world murder other humans, and this begs the question of why? What makes this small percentage of people â€Å"choose† to kill another person? The answer is that if they choose to do it, and they weren’t previously miswired so as said in the prior paragraph, then they must have been influenced by their surroundings. When Man A was six years old he didn’t choose to murder Man B, the events of his life led him to make this decision about whether or not murder was okay. This is yet another reason that he wasn’t truly free to choose; outside influence hinders the ability to choose freely. Whether he was abused, molested, lost a loved one, or just plain fed up with the monotony of everyday life in society, something pushed him over the edge. Something allowed for him to justify his actions; that something is outside influence. This deterministic train of thought explains why people do what they do, but not when. What makes us actually hit the point of no return, or when will the right opportunity hit the right mood leading the right action? (In our example the murder of Man B) The paradox between â€Å"free will† and â€Å"determinism† exists because of the influence of the different schools of thought. If one aligns his personal truth based on religious fervor, then an understanding of â€Å"free will† can exist logically and on the other hand if one bases his logic around science then â€Å"determinism† seems to be the only answer. So where does that leave philosophy, the great bridge between the two polarized schools of thought? It leaves philosophy somewhere in the middle, examining the validity of both sides of the argument, and helping to shed light on the debate over whether or not we truly are free to make a choice or if we are merely floating along the currents of the universe. Personally, I’m lost somewhere in the middle, hoping that the answer to this time-old question will be revealed.

Compulsive Gambling and It’s Cost to the Economy :: essays research papers

Compulsive Gambling and It’s Cost to the Economy   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  More than 5 million Americans are pathological, compulsive and problem gamblers, and another 15 million are at risk of becoming just like them. A common definition of problem gambling is: a progressive disorder characterized by a continuous or periodic loss of control over gambling and irrational thinking and behavior despite the consequences. When gambling interferes with any one’s life, it can be categorize as an addiction or disease, just like alcohol and drug addiction is categorize as a disease. A study conducted for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission found that 20 million American have or could develop gambling problems. Also they have estimated those 1.8 million American adults as well as up to 1.1 million American adolescents age 12 through 17 engage in severe â€Å"pathological† gambling each year. As legalize gambling has become more common in the United States; problems have sprung up as well. That negative influence is becoming more apparent as gambling is more widely available. It is becoming increasingly easy to gamble in the United States particularly in the last 10 years, and problems with gambling are much more common now than they ever were. Studies show that for every dollar gambling produces for a regional economy, three dollars are lost because of the economic and social cost of gambling. The study has also said that if the government legalizes more gambling, taxpayers will lose money, whether they gamble or not. The gambling industry believ es it is just selling an innocent form of family entertainment, but they don’t mention how much the players lose or how gambling encourages addictive behavior or the enormous costs it creates for the rest of society. It has been said that, gamblers with higher counts of gambling symptoms will have higher rates of problem. There many consequences associated with compulsive, pathological and problem gamblers. Examples of such consequences include job and financial problems, divorce, poor health, and criminal involvement. These addictions are the lifeblood of the gambling industry, said an economist from the University of Illinois by name Earl Grinols.

HR Governance

HR governance is the practice of making effective decisions regarding the human resources of the organization and the efficient controlling of them. It is interrelated with establishing HR policies, continuous monitoring of their proper implementation and governing the body of an organization. This study explores the HR governance practice of the private sector in Bangladesh and its impact on organization's sustainable human resource development. To investigate this scenario, sample size of 200 from five manufacturing industries and three service industries both sectors were selected to conduct a survey through floating a structured questionnaire on target employees. Here, six independent variables talent management, consolidated HR policy, HR risk management, employee development, compensation benefits, employee welfare and one dependent variable sustainable human resource development have been identified to conduct the regression analysis. The result shows that the f-test value = 34.400 which implies that the model is statistically significant and valid. The significance level of the employee development and compensation benefits at (0.000) which have positive impact on sustainable human resource development. On the contrary, the talent management is insignificant at (0.006) and consecutively consolidated HR policy (0.019), HR risk management (0.063) and employee welfare (0.106). The regression model illustrates that the private sector of Bangladesh is going to be comparatively more concern about the employee development and compensation management but others variables have insignificant but positive relationship for the increasing of sustainable human resource development. Moreover, this study attempts to provide the conceptual and pragmatic insight of the HR governance practices in the private sector of Bangladesh; this might help to emerge new corridors for future research. Keywords – HR governance, talent management, consolidated HR policy, HR risk management and sustainable human resource development.INTRODUCTIONWith the passage of time, HR governance has become an emerging concern where it is esteemed as the backbone of the sustainable human resource development which transforms the human resource into the human capital and all these ensure the incremental growth of an organization. Furthermore, the traditional HR policies and regulations act as the precautionary guard for the organization, but now it is reactive in nature through reducing, transferring and deducting actual and probable HR risks and liabilities. However, it is essential for an organization to become transparent administrative structure to achieve core competitive advantages of human resource enforcing the non-compliance proactive measures. Effective HR governance facilitates compliance with legal and ethical obligations relating to people management practices and having a proper HR governance structure in place which can even impact the way an organization does business and makes decisions at the highest levels-right up including its board of directors. Hence, this structure will ensure that decisions related to personnel management practices are governed at the highest level thereby strengthening HR and management credibility (Kreissl, 2012)[1]. For instance, like other developing countries, Bangladesh has been marked by the inefficiency of the public sector to meet the demand of its citizens, ineffective public services, and unfavorable environment for the proper growth in the private sector, leadership crisis, lack of transparency and accountability in administration, ineffective political institutions and so on. In this regard, it is the best to follow equity at workplace, well-being and employee development and some other five preconditions for sustainable human resource development such as; compliance, governance, ethics, culture and leadership (Cohen, 2012) [2]. Another thing is that the well concern about labor law and consistent HR governance are yet not flourished at macro pace especially in private sector. Because most of the listed companies in Bangladesh are dominated by family members, occupying important posts like CEO or the managing director, leading to inefficient HR governance practices (Brennam, Solomon, Uddin and Choudhury, 2008) [3]. Due to the absence of govt. close monitoring; sometimes they are violating the principles of Bangladesh Labor Law.Moreover, public sector is running under the shelter of legal government compliance and several pivotal research works have been done over this but now private sector is emerging not only in the corporate governance rather good HR governance. In spite of, there is very few research works exist on this context where mostly done on about the good governance practices and its prospects in Bangladesh. Almost there is no instance of such work that can show the emerging essentials of good HR governance and its impact on the sustainable human resource development.Nevertheless, there are some laying challenges so that the private sector can't go ahead as expected in terms of human competencies. For such poor feedback in HR governance, it is essential to examine how far Bangladesh lags behind the HR governance practices. Against all these backdrops, this paper attempts to critically analyze the current scenario of HR governance and also to sketch out the impediments in the way of HR governance to improve the HR competencies in the private sector of Bangladesh. To end, this study shows a set of measures which need to be undertaken as an effort to establish good HR governance and indemnifying sustainable human resource development in Bangladesh.OJECTIVES OF THE STUDYThe fundamental objective of this study is to address the research question; â€Å"Does HR governance affect the sustainable human resource development from the perspective of private sector in Bangladesh?† Some other objectives are:To investigate the response of HR governance in the private sector of Bangladesh.To measure the impact of HR governance on sustainable human resource development.To identify diff erent factors affecting sustainable human resource development.

Hegemonic Masculinity in the Media - 1080 Words

Hegemonic masculinity can be defined as â€Å"the cultural idealized form of masculine character, which emphasizes the connecting of masculinity to toughness and competitiveness as well as the subordination of women and the marginalization of gay men† (Trujillo, 1991, p. 290). We live society were male dominance is the order of the day, from the family arena to the workplace, and in sports in which individuals with certain characteristics and attributes as seen as normal and the rest are termed as the â€Å"other†. This paper will focus on how hegemonic masculinity has been mediated through the media, by creating gender gaps. Furthermore, it is important to note that the media is important sources that orchestrate the perception of individuals in†¦show more content†¦Cooky, Messner, Hextrum indicated that the coverage of women’s sports is the lowest ever irrespective of the increased participation of girls and women in sports at high school collegiate a nd professional level (240). For instance KABC a Los Angeles televise new sports, spent less than 30secs of their sports segment covering the women’s U.S golf Opening on the LGPGA tour (240). Also the rare moments when women’s’ sports receives coverage from mainstream news media, the media trivializes women athleticism or reproduces a narrow stereotypical representation of female athleticism that draws sexist and/or racist ideologies (206). In their examination of print media they found that men were overrepresented in the sports newsroom (Cooky, Messner, Hextrum, 207). For instance, 94% of sports editors, 89% of copy editors, 89% of assistant sports editors, 87% of sports reporters and 88% of columnist are all male, the majority are white (207). However, this conveys the message that sports is for, by and about men. Trujillo, on the other hand, gave five features that depict hegemonic masculinity: physical force and control, occupational achievement, family hi erarchy, frontiermanship and heterosexuality (291). He proposed that history and dominant groups have successfully persuaded many Americans to believe that sports builds manly character and develop physical fitness, realizes justice and prepare young men for war (Trujillo,Show MoreRelatedHegemonic Masculinity Essay1114 Words   |  5 Pagesthan not people get their ideas of masculinity from the shows and movies they watch throughout their lives. In the article Hegemonic masculinity in media contents, by Peter J. Kareithi, he focuses much more specifically on how the media has presented it to the public, and less of the why, and how it started. The paper by Connell and Messerschmidt, Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept, does a much better job at explaining the history of hegemonic masculinity and how it came to be. Though togetherRead MoreThe Theory Of The Glass Ceiling Metaphor Essay1628 Words   |  7 Pagesof research was hegemonic masculinity theory. 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Law, R (1997) states that â€Å"The concept of hegemonic masculinity allows for us to theorise the s imultaneous existence of different constructions of masculinity, the socialRead MoreGender As A Primary Cultural Frame1517 Words   |  7 Pagesbetween women and men and placement in sex category is both relevant and enforced, doing gender is unavoidable† (West and Zimmerman 1987:137). By analyzing social media, we can see how pervasive gender identities are outside of physical social interactions. For my analysis, I decided to gather my data from one of the popular forms of social media, Facebook. One of the patterns found in the collected data was of the â€Å"fag discourse† in which homophobia is central to constructing masculine identity (Pascoe