So when one of my students comes up with philosophy I just say 'stop right there', I mean, say they mention Descartes, 'I think therefore I am', yeah but this [pointing at glass] doesn't think and it exists"
"Dad, that's not the point, it does not imply things that don't think don't exist and you don't even know this exists and--"
"But it does, it's right there! Anyway, it's like Plato 'there is a cave and you don't see the outside and so on', well how could he know that? Why does it have to be an outside world?"
"But he is not saying he knows that, he is just introducing us to the possibility of-"
"But how could he know?"
"Not the point, dad"
"It's bullshit"
I went to the bathroom after that, he won't listen. He is a literature teacher and he knows tons of shit about everything, but he is very objective and he works on his own internal logic, he is always right, no matter the fallacy. I share lots of his opinions, I don't even like Plato, but when I see him talking like this... Dismissing it for the wrong reasons, even ignoring ONE of the many interpretations that I wanted to explain. And not to mention Descartes, my father is so sure of himself he doesn't even get what he was trying to say.
It makes me sad. He is a very intelligent man, knows a lot of stuff, at the school he teaches he gets to be called "walking encyclopedia". He is 54 years old now.
But to get to the subject of the thread: do you think you are going to be open minded for the rest of your life (assuming you are already)? When people get old, they get too sure of themselves, I'm afraid that it will happen to me.
Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness was being made into a movie by Guillermo del Toro but the project has been canceled. The Hollywood producers demanded that the movie be PG-13, which is more lucrative in US markets. Del Toro was pushing for the more adult R rating.
This is unfortunate. That said, why would this movie require an R rating? Lovecraft's writing doesn't tend to be explicitly violent - the horror is more cerebral, with unimaginable monsters and unfathomable fears. A PG-13 writing would require the director to rely more on suspense and quality storytelling than flashy special effects and gruesome makeup. As much as I respect del Toro, it sounds as if he was taking the movie in a bad direction.
Any thoughts? Should a Lovecraft movie be R or PG-13? Does a Lovecraft story need graphic violence to make its point?
A paragraph is a series of sentences that are organized and coherent, and are all related to a single topic. Almost every piece of writing you do that is longer than a few sentences should be organized into paragraphs. This is because paragraphs show a reader where the subdivisions of an essay begin and end, and thus help the reader see the organization of the essay and grasp its main points.
Paragraphs can contain many different kinds of information. A paragraph could contain a series of brief examples or a single long illustration of a general point. It might describe a place, character, or process; narrate a series of events; compare or contrast two or more things; classify items into categories; or describe causes and effects. Regardless of the kind of information they contain, all paragraphs share certain characteristics. One of the most important of these is a topic sentence.
TOPIC SENTENCES
A well-organized paragraph supports or develops a single controlling idea, which is expressed in a sentence called the topic sentence. A topic sentence has several important functions: it substantiates or supports an essay’s thesis statement; it unifies the content of a paragraph and directs the order of the sentences; and it advises the reader of the subject to be discussed and how the paragraph will discuss it. Readers generally look to the first few sentences in a paragraph to determine the subject and perspective of the paragraph. That’s why it’s often best to put the topic sentence at the very beginning of the paragraph. In some cases, however, it’s more effective to place another sentence before the topic sentence—for example, a sentence linking the current paragraph to the previous one, or one providing background information.
Although most paragraphs should have a topic sentence, there are a few situations when a paragraph might not need a topic sentence. For example, you might be able to omit a topic sentence in a paragraph that narrates a series of events, if a paragraph continues developing an idea that you introduced (with a topic sentence) in the previous paragraph, or if all the sentences and details in a paragraph clearly refer—perhaps indirectly—to a main point. The vast majority of your paragraphs, however, should have a topic sentence.
Most paragraphs in an essay have a three-part structure—introduction, body, and conclusion. You can see this structure in paragraphs whether they are narrating, describing, comparing, contrasting, or analyzing information. Each part of the paragraph plays an important role in communicating your meaning to your reader.
Introduction: the first section of a paragraph; should include the topic sentence and any other sentences at the beginning of the paragraph that give background information or provide a transition.
Body: follows the introduction; discusses the controlling idea, using facts, arguments, analysis, examples, and other information.
Conclusion: the final section; summarizes the connections between the information discussed in the body of the paragraph and the paragraph’s controlling idea.
The following paragraph illustrates this pattern of organization. In this paragraph the topic sentence and concluding sentence (CAPITALIZED) both help the reader keep the paragraph’s main point in mind.
SCIENTISTS HAVE LEARNED TO SUPPLEMENT THE SENSE OF SIGHT IN NUMEROUS WAYS. In front of the tiny pupil of the eye they put, on Mount Palomar, a great monocle 200 inches in diameter, and with it see 2000 times farther into the depths of space. Or they look through a small pair of lenses arranged as a microscope into a drop of water or blood, and magnify by as much as 2000 diameters the living creatures there, many of which are among man’s most dangerous enemies. Or, if we want to see distant happenings on earth, they use some of the previously wasted electromagnetic waves to carry television images which they re-create as light by whipping tiny crystals on a screen with electrons in a vacuum. Or they can bring happenings of long ago and far away as colored motion pictures, by arranging silver atoms and color-absorbing molecules to force light waves into the patterns of original reality. Or if we want to see into the center of a steel casting or the chest of an injured child, they send the information on a beam of penetrating short-wave X rays, and then convert it back into images we can see on a screen or photograph. THUS ALMOST EVERY TYPE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION YET DISCOVERED HAS BEEN USED TO EXTEND OUR SENSE OF SIGHT IN SOME WAY.