Philosophy Paper

Ma James Ma Professor Person Philosophy Class 4 December 2009 Philosophy – Good? Indeed. Throughout history, philosophy has been a really good discipline for some people to study. It is good. In some cases, philosophy can help people to understand thoughts and feelings about life (Mentz 2009). Occassionaly, this can be used for academic research. For instance, some experts claim that the proportion of polar bears dying is inadvertently correlated with the amount of breathing humans perform on a daily basis and thus the meaning of life cannot be found in such frivolous pursuits as the eradication or preservation, for that matter, of the polar bear species (Culling 2009). As a result of such ground breaking research, the reader can safely assume that philosophy is a worthwhile field of academia, a wellspring of knowledge, “a proverbial conundrum of enigmatic proportions,” as Mentz put it. To further understand the ideological credence safely placed in philosophical research, one has only to examine those who have also perused the bookshelves of a local bookstore searching for the meaning of life. “On first reflection there appears a distinct lack of continuity in anthropological knowledge about Kurds.” (Houston 94, 2008). Clearly, there is a distinct correlation between philosophy and things that are good. Indeed, the following picture clearly illustrates the relative goodness of philosophical analyzation:

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Furthermore, philosophy illustrates the internal need one has for

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trust and life

(Culling 2007). The fact that deep

thoughts and processes occur occassionally is true: “I made a typo in my annual budget request, but don’t worry, there are only two things you can’t buy for the test lab this year. Hardware and software,” (Dilbert’s Boss, 2007). Sometimes when people think about meaning of life, it is true that it is meaningful per se. Such self-fulfilling prophesies —as critics have deemed them—have not been received so warmly: “In the eyes of man, philosophy is but a small and unrewardingly shallow pursuit involving only the things you can think about on your own. This is rather unworthy of further examination simply due to its inherently cyclical, introspection-based

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approach to positivist study. Very little proverbial ‘new ground’ is ever broken” (Mentz, The Pitfalls of Research, 2010).

In a similar manner, a wise and aged scholar once poisted that umbrellas represented a shift in the space-time continuum: “With each opening of the umbrella, it represents a shift in the space-time continuum.” (Culling, 1854). In some of Culling’s later writings, he expounded upon this theory, arguing that death comes to us all. “Life is but a gas vapor. It smells good, but only lasts for a

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short time, and is bad for your brains,” (Culling, 1907). As the work of this very intelligent man shows, yes, Philosophy is good. According to the Wikipedia article on philosophy, it

has been growing.

“Within the last century, philosophy has increasingly become an activity practiced within the university, and accordingly it has grown more

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specialized and more distinct from the natural sciences. Much of philosophy in this period concerns itself with explaining the relation between the theories of the natural sciences and the

ideas of the

humanities or common sense.” (Wikipedia)

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As philosophy is on the upswing, new theories have emerged, particularly in the area of eye-crunchy metaphysics. “Eyecrunchies

are the

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body’s natural way of producing croutons. An essential ingredient in all salads” (Culling,

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2003). For all of these reasons,

philosophy is really

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good because sometimes it

does

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make things really

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interestin g about

life

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(Mentz, 1990).