St Thomas Aquinas Five Ways Philosophy Essay

St Thomas Aquinas Five Ways Philosophy Essay St. Thomas Aquinas is most famous for his Five Ways. He regarded that the ontological argument as invalid. We cannot prove that God exists, merely by considering the word God, as the ontological argument in effect supposes. For that strategy work, we would have to presume to know Gods essence. The proposition of God exists is not self-evident to us mere mortals. Although people can prove Gods existence in several ways, we cannot do it just by examining the concept of God. We have to consider what it is about nature that makes it manifest that it requires God as its original cause. According to Aquinas, the existence of God can be proved are in fact five, and it is his most famous Five Ways The first way to prove that God exists is to consider the fact that natural things are in motion. According to Aquinas, a first mover must exist. If first mover do not exists, there would be no other mover and nothing would be in motion. It means all the natural things are in motion, and it needs another moving thing to move it. As we look around the world and survey move things, it becomes clear that they do not put themselves into motion. But all things are all in motion, and they cannot move by their own, therefore, a first mover must exist and it is not moved by other, and that thing is God. The most important idea Aquinas wants to say is that things do not put themselves into motion, do not suppose that he thought that people cannot get up out of their chair and walk across the room. He means that things do not just bring themselves into existence, there must be someone put themselves into motion. The second way of proving Gods existence is kind of similar to the first one. Aquinas says in the world of sensible things, nothing causes itself. It means everything is causes by something else. It has to be a first cause, if there have no first cause exist, there would be no first effect. In fact, there would be no second or third effect either. If first causes must exist, then we must admit that is God. Aquinas did not say anything in either of the first two proofs about things being moved or caused by earlier motion or causes. The various motions and causes he is talking about are simultaneous. In Aquinass opinion, there is no philosophical reason that the chain of causes could not go back infinitely. But there cannot be an infinite series of simultaneous causes or movers. His argument is that things must be causes by something earlier, and because this chain of causes cannot go back infinitely, therefore, it must have a first cause, and it is God. The Big Bang theory is a good example to proof Aquinass theory. The Big Bang is accepted by most scientists that the universe is an explosion. The Big Bang is the beginning of space and time of matter and energy, and it is the beginning of our expanding universe. But the universe does have an absolute beginning, which was a first physical event. It is difficult to believe that the first physical event has no explanation, for that amounts to saying that the entire universe is just a chance occurrence. If the physical event is explicable, then it would seem that the explanation must refer to some sort of nonphysical phenomenon, which is God. The third way is the most complicated of the Five Ways, God is the necessary of our being existence. Aquinas says everything can lay our hands on belongs to need-not-exist category, if everything belongs to this category, then at one time nothing existed, and then it would have been impossible for anything to have begun to exist, and thus even now nothing would exist. There must exist something the existence of which is necessary. Aquinas believed that he had not yet ruled out the possibility that the necessity of this necessary being might be caused by another necessary being, whose necessity might be caused by another. He asserted that it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another. Therefore, he concludes that there must be some necessary being that has its own necessity, and that is God. Aquinass first three proofs of Gods existence are versions of what today is called the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument is actually not one argument but a type of argument. This type of argument means that the existence of contingent things, things that could possibly not have existed, points to the existence of a noncontingent or necessary being, God, as their ultimate cause or source of being. Aquinass fourth way to prove God is the gradation to be found in things. It has to consider the fact that all natural things possess degrees of goodness, truth, nobility, and all other perfections. The gradation in things in the sense that something can be more good. Therefore, there must be that which is the source of these perfections, namely, pure goodness and truth, and this is what we call God. The fourth proof about the existence of goodness or good things is called the moral argument. This argument is supporting the existence of God, it argues that God is the best and is the only explanation for morality. God is the best moral for everything; God must exist to support that moral order exists. The last way to proof of Gods existence is predicated on the observation that natural things act for an end or purpose. That is, they function in accordance with a plan or design. Accordingly, an intelligent being exists by which things are directed toward their end, and this intelligent being is God. Arguments like Aquinass fifth proof, according to which the apparent purposefulness or orderliness of the universe or its parts or structure points to the existence of a divine designer, are called teleological arguments. The teleological argument suggests that, given this premise, the existence of a designer can be assumed, typically presented as God. According to Aquinas, some theological truths, truths of revelation, are such that philosophy could never discover them. For example, philosophy cannot establish that the universe had a beginning and is not eternal. And not everything discovered by philosophy is important for salvation. But philosophy and theology, although separate disciplines, are not incompatible, they complement each other. From standpoint of theology, that God exists is a given, a truth that people start out knowing. Thus, Aquinass proofs of Gods existence are philosophical proofs. They do not depend for their soundness on any religious principles.

Critique on Distinctive Features

Andrew Ike B. Waga ENG 106 Dec. 14, 2011 2010-53632 Trubetzkoy, Jakobson or Chomsky, Whose Distinctive Features are truly â€Å"Distinct†? â€Å"Teacher, teacher, Help me, I have just been side swiped by a car! † These were the exact words that came out from the mouth of the school’s resident hooligan, Kevin, one afternoon after class.During those times, our school has been intensively campaigning for every student to speak English at least while on campus, in preparation for the coming PAASCU (Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges) visit, we were so prepped up that we were even speaking in English outside school â€Å"just in case the Assessors are just loitering around, observing† our teachers would say.So one afternoon, after finding not much to do, Kevin, decided he wanted to show his antics to us, saying that he is planning to pull off a prank on our school’s English Coordinator, and our class adviser as well, we had a carefu lly laid out plan, he would be rushing from the street towards our school gate while we convince our teacher to approach the gate as well, and then he shouted, the exact words on quotation, except that he pronounced swiped as /s? ?pd/. Our teacher, knowing Kevin’s reputation, was already sensing that she was a bait to a good laugh, calmly yet in an authoritarian manner said, â€Å"side swipe! s? aIp/ Next time, Kevin, try pronouncing the words well, so as not to lose your momentum, there’s always a next time! † with her signature smirk. I remembered this incident while reading about Natural classes, I am very sure that my teacher knew what Kevin meant, since all of us thought that Kevin’s pronunciation of that word was correct as far as we were concerned, until the jokes went back to Kevin. Growing up in a city that speaks Cebuano, it is inevitable for some English words to get that â€Å"bisaya† flavour, like the occasional /p/ becomes an /f/ or t he letter h is pronounced as /? ? / and many more, but nevertheless, besides deviating from what we know as a â€Å"standard† for American English, we pretty much understood each other despite the glitches. And so I thought, why was it necessary to dwell on the distinctive features of sounds when the main importance has been served, comprehension. But then, I had to understand that it is necessary so that I would know just how these sounds are related to be viewed as almost interchangeable, just how â€Å"similar† was similar? Hence, we go to the distinctive features of sounds.In dealing with Distinctive features, I focused first on the work of Trubetzkoy, most people would start with Jakobson before Trubetzkoy but I saw that it was Trubetzkoy who first saw Phonetics and Phonology as separate disciplines. He mentioned that form (contrast, system patterning) must be studied separately from substance (acoustics, articulation). Hence, there was a greater concentration on sounds first before they are seen as words. It was Trubetzkoy who introduced the idea of â€Å"oppositions† in Phonology which he mentioned in his primary work, GrundzUge der phonologie  (1939).Oppositions would refer to a pair or set of sounds sharing the same feature that is not shared with any other sounds. Here are some of Trubetzkoy’s Oppositions: a) Bilateral oppositions A bilateral opposition refers to a pair sounds that share a set of features which no other sound shares fully. For example, voiceless labial obstruents =  /p,f/. Note that obstruents are defined as having a degree of stricture greater than that of approximants (that is, stops and fricatives). b) Multilateral oppositions A group of more than 2 sounds which share common features.For example, labial obstruents,/p,b,f,v/, are both labial and obstruents, so they share two features. c) Privative (Binary) Oppositions One member of a pair of sounds possesses a mark, or feature, which the other lacks. Such features are also known as  binary  features which a sound either possesses or lacks. Voicing is such a feature. A sound is voiced or NOT voiced. The sound which possesses that feature is said to be  marked  (eg  [+voice]) whilst the sound lacking the feature is  unmarked  (eg. [-voice]). d) Gradual Oppositions The members of a class of sounds possess different degrees or gradations of a feature or property.For example, the three short front unrounded vowels in English  /? ,  e,  ? /  which are distinguished only by their height. In this system height would be a single feature with two or more degrees of height. As of present times, when Chomsky and Halle’s set of Distinctive features are accessible to us, this would seem very broad and general, hence, not really dwelling into more specific details. But this jumpstarted the notion that sounds share similar qualities and it is crucial for the development of his friend, Jakobson’s own Distinct ive Feature Theory.Jakobson is known as the first one to formalize the Distinctive Feature Theory. He followed the findings of Trubetzkoy as one of his basis for building up his set of distinctive features. Jakobson’s original formulation of the Distinctive Feature Theory aside from Trubetzkoy was based on the ff. Ideas: (1) All features are BINARY. Sounds are either [+voice] or [-voice] (2) A small set of features is able to differentiate between the phonemes of any single language. (3) Distinctive features may be defined in terms of articulatory or acoustic features.Here is a table showing Jakobson’s Distinctive Features: Though, the advantage of Jakobson’s set is that it also has an acoustic description, I do think that the articulatory description is sufficient enough, since after articulating the sound we hear the sound we produced ourselves and yet not at all times would people share the same acoustic descriptions to their produced sound, because we all ha ve our own ways of pronouncing sounds, hence, I think that the acoustic description should be left for the speaker to describe and not defined by Jakobson’s description.Jakobson’s idea was a good starting point for Chomsky and Halle’s own set of distinctive features. With Jakobson’s Distinctive features serving as a terminus a quo for Chomsky and Halle, they were able to refine Jakobson’s set of features. A great achievement done by this duo is that they were able to establish the idea of â€Å"Natural Classes†. The aim is to carefully choose distinctive features to form a natural class of phonemes. An advantage of this approach is seen in writing Phonological rules hence, we get to understand why we can still comprehend to some words though they are mispronounced.Another is that if we are to choose the features well, it should be possible to refer to natural classes of phonemes with a smaller number of features, therefore allowing a more re fined set of characteristics to describe the phonemes involved in a natural class. Chomsky and Halle also introduced the feature classifications such as the major class features, the manner features and the place features thus paving the way for a more organized description in giving characteristics of phonemes.Chomsky and Halle was able to answer the concerns of redundancy when giving features, which is found in Generative Phonology, a component of generative grammar that assigns the correct phonetic representations to  utterances  in such a way as to reflect a native speaker’s internalized grammar. Given the current situation, I would have to choose Chomsky and Halle’s Theory of Distinctive Features as the most functional, because it is able to give more specific descriptions as compared to Trubetzkoy and Jakobson.Since we have established that Chomsky and Halle’s set gives the most detailed, comprehensive and most organized distinctive features, it would be best to follow their findings. But It is also important to note that without the ideas of Trubetzkoy and Jakobson in the Distinctive Feature theory, Chomsky and Halle’s own theory would not be as it is today, not able to answer loopholes and deficiencies found in the previous studies. So for me, it is like a ladder, one has to go through the intial steps first before reaching your destination, because as what my teacher would have said, â€Å"so as not to lose your momentum. † Bibliography

Vodafone AirTouch’s bid for Mannesmann

First of all, one has to mention that it is always difficult to evaluate a company. There is no single measure/calculation who can give you the valuation of a company. The value of a company can be different for every single human being. For instance, Vodafone Air Touch will try to calculate a very low valuation of the company because it wants to pay as less as possible, and Mannesmann a very high valuation, because it wants to get as much money as possible. As a result, it often depends on the interest of the different persons who evaluate a company. In October 1999, Mannesmann offered shares around 157. â‚ ¬. This was before the acquisition of Orange PLC, a competitor of Vodafone Air Touch in the UK market. After the acquisition, Vodafone offered 266â‚ ¬ per share, 68% more than the 157. 8â‚ ¬ per share Mannesmann offered few weeks before. Despite, this very high premium, Mannesmann’s CEO evaluated his company 350â‚ ¬ per share. Here in this case, I think that the main reason for this high price differences is that with time, Mannesmann’s bargaining position changed. In the beginning, their position was not as strong as in the end when they achieved to acquire Orange Plc, a telecommunication company in the U. K. which was growing faster than Vodafone. As a result, Mannesmann became a stronger competitor for Vodafone and Mannesmann’s CEO knew that. As a consequence, he increased the valuation of his company. The reason why for instance an analyst from Julius Baar valuated Mannesmann between 250â‚ ¬ and 350â‚ ¬ per share and many other analysts between 174â‚ ¬ and 250â‚ ¬ per share may have some reasons. The main reason is that, as anticipated before, it is very difficult to evaluate a company. Furthermore, it is even more difficult to evaluate how many synergies Vodafone Air Touch would benefit from this takeover. So it is very difficult to evaluate how much this Mannesmann takeover could be worth for Vodafone Air Touch. Moreover, one has to check which analysts own stocks of Mannesmann or Vodafone because this may also influence the different evaluations. (2) In your opinion, in general, when a company is the target of a hostile takeover bid, who should decide whether the terms and conditions of this bid are acceptable? The Chief Executive Officer (or the equivalent) of the target company? Or its Chairperson (if another person than the CEO)? Its board of directors? Its shareholders ? If the shareholders, how practically should they make their decision? In my opinion, only the shareholders should take this type of decision. They are the one who own the company, and they should decide if they accept the takeover bid or not. If 50 % + X agree with the bid price, then the takeover should take place. Of course, before taking the decision, they should listen to the opinion of the CEO, the Chairperson, some analysts, as well as the Board of Directors. However, in my opinion, none of these key persons should take part of the decision making process. In my opinion, the shareholders are the one who own the company, and they should decide what should happen with their investment. For instance, let us assume the employees would take part of decision making process. Then, in most of the cases, the employees would vote against a take over, because they fear about their jobs. They would never take a neutral decision, but a decision which is the best for them, not caring about the fact that the shareholders loose a high premium. They, as well as the trade unions, would vote against an takeover because they fear for the jobs. However, they never think about the fact, that if the company is not taken over, the company who made a mid remains a competitor. And this competitor could increase its market share in spite of the smaller company that did not accept the takeover. And in this case, the employees of the smaller company would even risk to loose more jobs. The CEO and the the Chairperson should never take this type of decisions. Because, they are only in charge of the operations of the company, but they do not own the company. As a result, they should not decide about the matter. 3) In the case of the Vodafone AirTouch bid for Mannesmann, who should have made the decision ? (Please take into account the fact that Mannesmann had two boards, the supervisory board, and the management board) What do you think of the sentence in the fourth paragraph of page 5 of the case: â€Å"Esser rejected the offer on the grounds that it was inadequate† ? As stated before the shareholders should have taken this de cision. They own the company and if 50 % + X is in favour of Vodadone AirTouch’s bid, then the company should accept the bid. Let’s assume that you invested 50 000 â‚ ¬ in Mannesmann’s shares and now somebody is offering you 80 000 â‚ ¬ for the shares. Then you should decide if you accept this money, or if you think that your shares are much worthier in some months/years. In that case you vote against the hostile takeover. I think that this system makes the decision making also very rapid and efficient. In fact, if one would also ask the employees, some analysts and so on, then the decision making process would be much longer. As a result, I think that the shareholders should take the decision, after having listened to the different opinions of the CEO, employees, analysts,.. However, I think it inacceptable that Esser as the CEO of the company, who does not own many shares, rejects the offer in the name of all the investors. This cannot be tolerated. In fact, he is like an employee of Meeresmann, he does not own the company, and he should take the best decisions for his shareholders who in some way gave him this job as CEO. As a result, I think that he cannot take the decision to refuse a bid without having spoken with any shareholder of the company. This is not a personal decision, but a decision which influences all the stakeholders of the company. It is unacceptable that he takes the decision on behalf of all the share- and stakeholders. (4) If you had been a shareholder of Mannesmann on December 17, 1999, what would you have liked to say to Klaus Esser ? What would you have like to say to Chris Gent ? If you had had the opportunity to vote to accept or not Vodafone's bid, how would you have voted (please ignore the subsequent events not described in the case) ? As a shareholder of Mannesmann, I would liked to ask him why he refused an offer of 266â‚ ¬ per share, which is a premium of 72. 2 % compared to Mannesmann’s closing price on October 18th. I would blame him for not having asked the shareholder what they thought about the offer. He took a decision about something which did not own him, but where I owned a fraction. Finally, I would ask him if he could guarantee me that the share price of Meeresmann would be as high as the Vodafone AirTouch’s offer in the future. Only if this is the case, the Esser would be partly excused. I mention only partly, because even if he thinks that the share price of Meeresmann will be higher in the near future, then he should have explained that to the shareholders. And then, if the majority of the shareholders would agree, then he could refuse the offer. As a shareholder of Mannesmann, I would ask him what would be the strategy of Vodafone AirTouch after the acquisition of Meeresmann. This is important to me, because I will have to make an important decision if the hostile takeover is agreed: either I keep the Vodafone shares or I sell all the shares the day of the take over. In that way, I would gild the premium. I would definitely have accepted the deal. During that time, it was quite sure that a consolidation of the telecommunication market would happen. As a result, I think that it would have been very difficult for Meeresmann, as one of the smaller companies, to survive in that market environment. Furthermore, the offered premium was so high, that I could not deny this offer.

Postpartum Depression Prevention And Screening - 1159 Words

Postpartum Depression: Prevention and Screening Postpartum depression (PPD) affects at least 10-20% of new mothers. However, the true incidence may be much higher due to the fact that screening is not considered to be a standard practice, leaving PPD undetected and untreated in many women (Schaar Hall, 2014). Postpartum depression not only negatively affects the mother; it also has a negative impact on the infant. For this reason, it is important for the health care providers caring for pregnant and postpartum mothers to screen them for risk factors associated with PPD, as well as educate them on ways to lessen their chances of getting PPD. It is also important for the health care providers to screen for PPD with a standardized tool like the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), and to take action in treating it when it is suspected or diagnosed. The presence of risk factors does not guarantee that a woman will experience PPD, but it may indicate that the health care provide r should pay a little more attention to possible signs and symptoms of depression. Known risk factors include depression or other mental illness prior to, and during, pregnancy, a family history of depression or other mental health disorders, a history of substance abuse, the age of the mother, financial concerns, lack of a support system, and being a single parent (Camp, 2013). In the presence of risk factors it is important for the health care provider to educate the woman on ways toShow MoreRelatedThroughout The Course Of A Pregnancy, Women Are Constantly1262 Words   |  6 Pagesand depression are both seen at high rates in pregnant women during the pregnancy as well as postpartum (Paul, Downs, Schaefer, Beiler, Weisman, 2013). 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