Philosophical Problems And Critical Thinking
The main arguments revolve around the philosophies of the professor. The first argument of the professor is that to save the human race in the world, the skillsets of a person is the main ingredient. This means that the bunker should only be composed of people whom he sees the value as builders who can actively contribute to the goal or evaluated solely by their practical contribution to society, these people are the professionals like carpenters, farmers, and structural engineers, thus, leaving outside of the bunker are those people whom the professor see are not worthy of a slot in the bunker and deficient in skillsets of practical value like poets, opera singers, zoologists and so on. To contradict this argument, we argue that it is not about the skills rather it is about how a person uses his reason to gain knowledge and use his mind in order for him to survive. Let’s follow Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy.
In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the tool for survival is one’s mind. To stay alive, we should act, and before we can act, we should know the nature. In Ayn Rand’s philosophy, the means for survival is one’s mind. According to her, to stay alive, we should act, and we should know the nature before we can act. It is the mind that enables a carpenter to know what to build, when to build it, how to build it. It is the mind that enables structural engineering to know what he needs to design structures. Thus, it is the mind that allows a person to know what to do in order to survive since it is the mind that manipulates our knowledge. There’s no survival if there’s no reason, and if there’s no reason, there’s no knowledge, since it can only be obtained through reason.
Another argument that we will follow is Aristotle’s philosophy that man is a rational being, and being rational, he/she is capable of apprehending ideas. Human beings at birth are not equipped with the skills necessary for survival. Thus, human intelligence or knowledge should be developed, but how can we develop this? Again, it is through reason that we can only acquire knowledge. Merging Rand and Aristotle’s philosophy, we argue that it is not about the skills rather it is about how a person uses his reason to gain knowledge and use his mind in order for him to survive. We can also argue that those people who are left out of the bunker are not useless since human beings are rational according to Aristotle. It is through our capacity of thinking that causes us to take care of issues of reality and encourages us to comprehend our general surroundings insightfully. We should utilize reason as our strategy for judgment in information and make decisions to survive. Lastly, let’s also contradict the argument that the professor made that professionals like poet, opera singer and the likes are worthless or useless.
To contradict this argument, we will follow Immanuel Kant’s What is Enlightenment? he argues that people should pay respect to the arts and sciences since people who study in the liberal arts and humanities have a higher tendency to think critically and be more open-minded. Therefore, we can argue that practical professions are not useless since according to Immanuel Kant, medicine, law, business, engineering are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life, however, poetry, beauty, romance are what we stay alive for. Moreover, the second argument is about the people that can live in the bunker are those people who are able to procreate to ensure the human race. The goal is to save the human race but is it really necessary to procreate? Do we really need to repopulate the world? Is the survival of the human species is that important? In contrast to the second argument, we’re going to claim that the end goal of our life is not to repopulate, it is to live happily. Following Aristotle’s philosophy, the end goal and the main purpose of human life is happiness.
For him, it is the final end or goal that embraces the totality of one's life. According to Aristotle, "for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy. " This means that the purpose or the ultimate goal of humans is to achieve happiness and earthly happiness. Aristotle additionally states that every individual ought to use his abilities to their fullest potential and should get fulfillment and bliss through the movement of their recognized breaking points. It is more like the final value of your life as lived up to this moment, evaluating how well you did in this world and how well you have lived up to your life as a human being. Furthermore, Aristotle contends that all that we do leads back to one end-satisfaction. As such, everything is an unfortunate obligation only bliss is an end in itself. Therefore, we can contend here that the explanation behind the human existence lies not in the survival of the species and reproducing to save the humankind but living our life to the fullest, living in existentially rich of joy, and make it meaningful, which is what we hope whenever we face difficult situations. Perhaps we can just spend the last day of our lives to the fullest rather than trying to save the human race. Moreover, another argument that we will contradict is about letting emotions rule over logic when it comes to decision-making. To contradict this argument, we will follow Plato’s philosophy. Plato depicts reason and emotion as two horses pulling a chariot in opposite directions, while the charioteer strives to get them to work as a team. Feelings are continual to part from our control and force us wrong way on the off chance that they are not constantly held under the tight control of reason. He also argues that we should be guided by reason rather than emotion, and he also considered reason to be intrinsically better than the Emotions. Following this philosophy, we can argue that we have to use reason if we are going to make practical decisions. We should not let emotion rule whenever we’re going to make decisions. When we utilize logic to decide, we look to avoid feelings, utilizing only rational strategies. Emotions lead us to wrong directions and sometimes make us do things we are going to regret later. Emotions can lead us to make choices that can hurt us in the long-run.
To conclude this paper, let’s now think that if the students and the professor balanced their logic and emotion when it comes to decision-making or at least set aside their feelings, then they will not go in the wrong direction. We must balance out our emotions and logic, or let logic rule us when it comes to decision-making because if we let emotions be superior to logic, then it will lead us to the wrong direction, if not then we will regret it. Moreover, human beings are limitless we do not settle for what they have, we go beyond what we have. Thus, we must not think of others as useless since mind and reason are the means of our survival, it’s not just about the skills that we have learned or acquired, it’s about how we use our mind to control the knowledge that we obtained through reason in order for us to survive. Lastly, we don’t need to procreate in order to save humanity it is not our end goal, our end goal is to live our life to the fullest.
