Austin Fontaine 
Megan Novelli Categories of thought- Kant
I found Immanuel Kant’s ideas on categories of thought very interesting. He felt that the things that we expreience are modified by purely mental concepts. This increases the meaning of these experiences in our minds. These categories are merely mental constructs, but they influence how we see everything. He included categories such as time and space, totality, cause and effect, reality, possibility-impossibility, and existance-nonexistence. He used these to try to disprove Hume, who felt that all conclusions we ever reach are based on experience. How then, Kant would argue, can we make statements such as certain things being impossible? Does our experience tell us that? Is it truly impossible? What about statements that begin with the word all? Do we ever really know all of something? Of course not! We can’t know all of anything! These categories are so ingrained into our mental processes that once we become aware of them, we realize that we are incapable of viewing the world without them. Kant said that “a mind without concepts would have no capacity to think…” and I think he is right.
I tried really hard to think of things outside of these concepts, and found myself incapable of doing so. Every experience I called to mind, I had applied these concepts to. This is especially true of my spiritual experiences. I view all things along a certain possibility-impossibility bias, and yet my view of spiritual things directly contradicts this view. Indeed, I use a whole different scale for spiritual things. I apply the concepts of time and space to everything; in fact, I do not know how not to view things within these two concepts. As such, I have a really hard time thinking of a God who exists outside of these two concepts. These categories or concepts are so ingrained into my way of thinking that I am unable to think without them.
Hannah Hendrix on Is Hogwarts a Mental Institution?
1:26 pm, 11.29.10
I am a huge HP fanatic as well, and was disappointed in his referral of Cedric as Derek too, Rachel. I particularly was intrigued by the family romance theory. Harry fits this so well, its almost creepy. I can remember being very angry at my parents when I was a little child, and I would run off to my room and wish that one day my “real” parents would come save me from the psychos I lived with. Usually, they were royalty, and I would of course go live in their legit European castle and vacation at our many chateaus. Oh, childhood.
Hannah Hendrix on All things must come to an end...
1:18 pm, 11.29.10
I am also going through some family drama right now, and have also turned to therapy for assistance in dealing with this. Similar to Naomi, Sara has informed me that I can’t hold myself responsible for the actions of other people. It’s sometimes a difficult to not throw blame around like a hot potato when situations are painful and when people get hurt. It’s difficult to realize that I can only control me, when I want to be able to fix everybody else. With my situation right now, I really want to fix my dad. He’s hurting so many people right now, but I can only control my actions, not his. Its very frustrating, but a part of life. I think realizing this is part of maturing.
Hannah Hendrix on Fiction: Fulfilling Our Needs?
1:06 pm, 11.29.10
I love this post. I spent my summer as a missionary intern in Honduras working with Mission Lazarus, and in the poor jungles I saw Maslow’s hierarchy of needs played out in a very big way. The people I came into contact with did not do so many of things that I take for granted, and it was because they were busy trying to survive. You don’t have a lot of time to read when you’re wondering where your next meal will come from. I wonder exactly what need that reading fiction fulfills. I personally love to read and will read anything I can get my hands on.
Hannah Hendrix on Self Diagnosis: Who Made You the Doctor?
12:57 pm, 11.29.10
Also love Modern Family, and loved the episode you referenced here. Your observation here is absolutely correct. It doesn’t help that we as a culture are constantly being bombarded by ads and other mediums telling us that we could have this, that, or the other. We are often so quick to jump to conclusions with the things that we think may plague us, and yet equally as often ignore the things that turn out to be major problems, as is the case in the Modern Family episode with Jay. I also completely agree with what Morgan said. The more we throw around terms like ADHD or OCD or whatever, the more it minimizes the struggles that those who actually suffer from those disorder. I personally used to joke around with OCD related humor all of the time, until one of my cousins was diagnosed with it. Those jokes or observations became much less humorous once I saw how Greyson really struggled with it and the burden that it was on their family.
Hannah Hendrix on I'll take theories for $1,000
12:48 pm, 10.04.10
Honestly, I put little stock in the mature earth theory. However, your statement that God made man and animals mature when he made them made perfect sense to me. If I really think about how I read the creation story, I always thought about man and animals being mature. Making them infants wouldn’t make a lot of sense. Just because he made man and animals mature, though, doesn’t necessarily mean he made the earth mature. I, like Ann, am a firm believer in the “I don’t know” theory. I happen to be quite glad that his ways are not my ways, nor his thoughts my thoughts. If they were, that sure would be a really boring, uncreative God. I like knowing that I don’t have to have all the answers.
Hannah Hendrix on Prosthetics and Ethics
12:39 pm, 10.04.10
I really love that you brought this up! It is so interesting to me to think about how much of what we perceive is truly reality. How much of what we feel or know or even experience, as in the case of phantom limb pain, is really reality? How much are our perceptions influenced by other seeminly unrelated things around us? I do not know the answers to these type of questions, but I’m glad you brought them up for us to think about.
Hannah Hendrix on I am afraid of Phineas Gage
12:31 pm, 10.04.10
I feel like I have a unique insight to your proposed problem. When I was in elementary school, we “lost” my older brother. He didn’t die, but was rather permanently mentally disabled as a result of a golf ball sized brain tumor and the resulting surgery to remove it. In one day he completely changed. The brother that I used to have is no longer with us, and in his place is now a man who is mentally about 8 years old. He used to be fun and crazy and ambitious and motivated and mentally sharp and quick and athletic and all of those sorts of things, but he is not anymore. The old Blake and the new Blake are two completely different people. My family tried for a year or two to get back to “normal” as our lives had been before, but there was no way of doing that. Instead, we decided that this was our new normal and that we would move on from here. I think that that is all you can really do in a situation like that. I don’t know what I would do, though, if something similar happened to me or to my future spouse. When the injured or different person is a sibling or a child, however, the only thing we’ve found that you can really do is love them where they’re at, not where they were or where you want them to be.
Hannah Hendrix on "We were made for each other"
12:59 pm, 09.20.10
I have actually thought a lot about this question, and have asked the input of several influential people in my life. My mother belongs to the camp that says “There is one person out there for you that God made just for you… Now go find him!” I personally feel that it would be almost cruel for God to put only one person in the world with whom I can share my life with and I have to go find him. My dad and I share what I think is a more realistic opinion on the matter. We are more on the free will side of the spectrum and feel that the choices that a person makes throughout his life will affect who he comes into contact with, and therefore affect who he will most likely choose to marry. Our choices are what ultimately determine that. For me, it’s less of a “The One” sort of deal, and more of a “This One” thing. It’s less about this being the only guy for me or whatever, and more about me choosing this particular guy to be with and to minister with and to serve with for the rest of my life. I don’t think God cares so much who I marry as much as He cares that I will serve Him and love Him with everything I have.
Hannah Hendrix on Is the need for God innate or derived?
12:42 pm, 09.20.10
I am currently taking Psychology of Religions, and this is one of the first topics that we looked at. Why do we “need” God? Across time and space, humans seem to have always looked for a higher power, a creator, or a spirit world. I like the way Rachel put it, mentioning this void in our lives that only God can fill. This is seemingly universal. One possible explanation that was offered in this class was that this world is hard. Life is hard. Bad things happen. People get sick and die. Our belief in a higher power gives us some stability over the chaos that reigns in our lives. When we compare our troubles to this big picture thinking, we realize that our troubles aren’t as bad (, or God can save us, or whatever. It also gives us hope and peace in thinking about our supposed afterlife, in which all of our troubles will be gone. So do people know about God because they created him to make their lives seem more meaningful or do people know about God because he has made himself manifest here on the earth and we can see the tangible results of his presence in his word or in the lives of his followers? Personally, I believe in the latter.
Hannah Hendrix on Locke and Education
12:32 pm, 09.20.10
I agree with a lot of what you said, Amy. The things that I learned while having fun have stuck with me through the years, but the things I feel like I was forced to learn or got little enjoyment from I can no longer remember. For example, I have always hated math. It is truly the bane of my existance. Memorizing multiplication tables was the worst thing in the world for me. My teacher realized that this was the case for me and some of the other students in my class, and wrote fun songs so that we could sing the multiplication tables instead of having to recite them. To this very day, I can still sing you several of these songs, because she made learning them fun. Yes, I do still sing them under my breath to do simple math problems.
While I do understand that trying to teach by incorporating fun and games can get out of hand, I think that turning learning into a game helps children learn where they are at and to have a better attitude towards learning, and that will positively affect their learning experiences for the rest of their lives.