The Best Study Partner of the Year Awards 2009

The Best Study Partner of the Year Awards 2009 has been once again seized by Issei Takehara (27), a philosophy student at Concordia University, Montreal. This is his second-time award winning following 2007. His unique posture while studying and stylish, though sporadical, performance of ‘taking off the glasses’ has famously been reputed as the single most admired feature found in the history of mankind. “I have once studied with him,” a local student says, “and even the coffee tasted different when he was around.” Another professor at his school reports him of being “the most amicable fellow we’ve seen in years,” adding friendly feel to his already established fame in the North America.

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Abstract for an Essay on Zombies

Can zombies run? For if their flesh is rotten, rapid motion would be impossible. This essay will focus on the nature of zombies and how they operate and for what purpose. The rumour tells us that there is a particular plant in Africa that zombifies people. The way in which this happens is that when one ingest this plant in the form of herbal remedies, it will cause him a temporal ‘apparent’ death, only to come back to life again in short a while. However the organs would be severely damaged, having stopped operating for however time it has taken them to revive. This, they say, is the cause of the disfiguration in their face and body. A problem persists, however, that how can someone after a long pause from life get resuccitated? For this to happen, the blood must stop circulating (thereby causing death) and again start circulating after a while. What then causes the blood to set into motion again? What exactly suppresses the blood circulation during this apparent death?

The story gets complicated as scientists say that the chemical component found in blowfish, called, tetradotoxin has a lot to do with turning people into zombies, yet in the country where they occasionally eat blowfish, i.e., Japan, there seems to be no evidence that zombies ever existed. In fact, zombies are a Haitian (also African) Voodoo concept that involves a sorceror bringing up the dead from the grave in order to use them as slaves. According to this tradition, a sorceror must call a dead person by his original name (the name he had when he was alive) before the grave, and the dead rises only to follow the orders from the ‘master’, i.e. the sorceror. Then, the sorceror usually gives an order to kill someone or command the undead to work for him. These undead zombies obey whatever the master tells them to do as long as they live, that is, until either they come to a natural death or they ingest salt. Aside from the incomprehensibility of their coming to a natural death – as they already are somewhat dead – the ingestion of salt may be the major cause of their death. Why salt? It is not clear. Further, an enquiry needs to be made about the claim that zombies are always at home at their graveyard between 3 am and 3:30 am.

Another curious, yet disturbing claim is that there seems to be a correlation between zombies and cannibalism. This, obviously, causes a problem for us, since if we are to acccept the previous claim that zombies will die upon ingestion of salt, what does it say about its alleged cannibalistic activities? For one to be a cannibal, one must eat the flesh of the same species; accepting the view that eating a living human being counts as an act of cannibalism for zombies, it would be impossible for us to accept the previous claim that zombies avoid salt, for living human beings possess salt in them. Then it must be that zombies eat other zombies in order to be classified as cannibals. Still, a problem persists, for eating is an activity done for the sake of nutrition; what sort of nutrition can zombies provide us? Also, if zombies are able to eat other zombies, zombies themselves must have no salt in them. This would mean that they have lost salt sometime between the time of their death and their zombification. But how is it possible? Again, there are only two causes of death for zombies: natural death and ingestion of salt. Does being eaten count as a natural death, for the other option is impossible since they have no salt in them? Or can they endure even after they’ve been eaten? How is cannibalism among zombies even conceptually possible? These are the questions I will be dealing with in this essay, and finally discuss if they can indeed run, hence whether we need to be alert of the fact of their movement.

 

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Prospectus for PHIL481 (final)

 

Prospectus

 

There are two types of studies on life: the life of animals and that of plants. Aristotle makes a distinction that the plants have only one soul, that of nutritive, and that the life of plants is a simple one. The life of animals, on the other hand, is more complex and possesses the sensitive soul in addition to the plants’ nutritive soul. Further, Aristotle tells us that in order to study about plants, one needs to have studied about animals first. This might strike us as a surprise, for why study what is complex first rather than discuss about what is simple? Indeed, his collaborator on the project, Theophrastus’ method of investigation on plants was in sync with Aristotle’s. It is also important to bear in mind that Aristotle did not write on plants but merely mentioned about them in the course of discussing about animals. There he speaks of plants as ‘upside-down’ analogously with regard to the ways in which animals take in food, i.e. animals take in food from the mouth, the upper part of the body, while plants take in food from the roots, which is analogous to the upper body for animals. However, we see there are instances in which plants do take in food from ‘the lower part’, i.e. leaves above the ground, as with the case for insectivorous plants like venus flytraps or sundews. Further, one of the primary diffreneces between animals and plants is that the former has a stomach while the latter doesn’t. This is because animals take in undigested food, thereby needing a place for concocting the food, i.e. stomach, while plants take in food in the form of liquid, i.e. in the form already ‘concocted’, from the earth. Having a stomach is particularly important in Aristotle’s theory of animals. For one, the more teeth means the less number of stomachs needed in an animal, for another, it acts as a concocting device, discharging excess and residue while decomposing the food and turning it into nutrition. The nutrition goes to the upper part of the body while the residue goes to the lower part. The mid-point is the stomach, the digestive organ where the sorting of the food happens. This why the less teeth you have, the more stomachs you will need since chewing is the first stage of digestion. Following this, though, all animals with a tooth must have a stomach. But what about those plants that eat insects? If consuming of an unconcocted food requires one to have a stomach, should insectivorous plants not also need a stomach? Another curious case is with anteaters, for they do not have teeth but possess a stomach. Aristotle said that all animals that have teeth must have a stomach, which does not mean those animals that do not have teeth cannot have a stomach. But if some animals with no teeth, like turtles and tortoises, can have a stomach, why can’t plants have a stomach as well?

I will first discuss what it means to be a plant and what takes one to be qualified as an animal, why it is important to study plants first as well as examining whether Aristotle believes there is such a unified study as deals with life as a whole. Second, I will compare the similarities or differences between Aristotle’s account of plants and that of Theophrastus’. Finally, discussions will follow about insectivorous plants and whether or not such an exception could affect Aristotle’s entire project to speak about life.

 

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