Draft a six- to eight-page paper based upon a life-changing decision you or someone in your community has had to make. Address the following

1. (1) Identify a decision about which reasonable minds can disagree; (2) explain the nature of belief and identify the beliefs and values that informed the decision that was made; (3) explain a relevant theory of human freedom, consciousness, and/or reality; (4) analyze how the chosen theory might approach the decision, including the relevant considerations and the ultimate conclusion reached.

2. Explain the relevant theories with support from the course texts) and from pre-approved secondary sources (including, but not limited to, the course text, online lectures, and a list of suggested online resources). In addition to the assigned readings, you should also read and address least one of the primary text selections in the course textbook. You should cite all resources using correct APA citation.

Criteria Identified a decision about which reasonable minds can disagree.Explained the nature of belief and identified the beliefs and values that informed their perspective on the decision made.Explained a relevant theory of human freedom, consciousness, and/or reality with support from primary texts and authoritative secondary sources.Analyzed how the chosen theory might approach the decision.Used correct grammar and spelling.Conformed to APA citation and page length guidelines (6-8 pages).

Introduction

When it comes to matters of politics and faith, like, building of on fairness and equality, protection of

human and civil rights and the protection of the nation, the reasonable minds can disagree. One must

develop disagreements rather than consensus in order to make more effective decisions. Alternatives that

make one think more deeply about the issue is provided by the disagreement. One is not ready to make a

decision without a disagreement. The concerns must be first addressed effectively before making the

decision. Alternatives are provided by the disagreement that helps one in breaking out of pre-conceived

notions and stimulates the imagination.

Figure out the reasons due to which the people disagree and consider both sides of the issue. One

has a closed mind, unless the alternatives have been considered. Adequate disagreements are demanded by

the right decision. Disagreement is organized by the effective decision-maker as it protects him or her

against being taken in by the incomplete or false statements. The plausible is converted into the right, and

the right is then further converted into a good decision by the disagreement. One of the common visions of

the communities is to assure a successful neighborhood, where families have access to the opportunities,

service and support. 

By investing in neighborhoods, the communities are working towards bringing changes in the future

of families and children. For this change, one of the powerful engines that have been found is the community

decision-making. Now we will address the community decision of assuring a successful neighborhood to

families and children. Furthermore, we will see the values and beliefs and the nature of identity and beliefs

on which the decision was made. In the end addresses the relevant theory of human reality, consciousness

and freedom and the manner in which the decision has been approached by the theory.

The Identification of the Decision about which Reasonable Minds can disagree

The central factor to this decision of the community is the residents of the neighborhood. In the

delivery and design of resources and services, they must be perceived as the critical co-investors. In the

change process, an essential investment is developing authentic partnerships among other stakeholders and

neighborhood residents. While this decision is complex and challenging, there is a possibility that

communities can succeed in transforming their neighborhood with the right level of resources and support.

In making the decision regarding successful neighborhoods, the community will focus on following factors,

like, the expectations regarding the families and children, the factors that are contributing or causing the

current state of things, and the things required to change the current conditions.

In order to make the decision, one must invite all the community members for investment as unified

support around the decision can be found by engaging a broad cross-section of the community. Before

proceeding towards the decision, one must communicate with the people who look like the neighborhood,

which includes people who represent the gender, class, and culture backgrounds of the community.

The Community-Decision Making

For bringing the change of successful neighborhood where families and children can thrive and avail

all the opportunities and support, one of the powerful engines that have been identified, is the community-

decision making. A shared commitment to build local accountability and capacity, to challenge the inequities

that have impacted the current conditions, and to achieve improved results for neighborhoods, families and

children, is known as the community decision-making. The notion that the comprehensive plans can be

implemented and developed by the communities through effective partnerships is the factor on which the

community decision-making is based.

The community decision-making process enables the community to assure the ability and

sustainability to take desired programs to scale through supportive public policies, strategic alliances, and

result-driven financing strategies. To assure accountability, monitor progress, make decisions and assessing

the needs of the community, use of reliable, relevant and timely data must be promoted. In achieving the

results agenda of the community, the community stakeholders must be supported as accountable partners

and co-investors.

In order to achieve the desired result, an inclusive or broad agenda or vision must be developed. In

order to assure the well-being of all families, the factor which is critical to empowering and mobilizing the

community is engaging in a results-driven process starting with the end in mind.

The Nature of Belief and Identification of the Values and Beliefs that Informed Perspective on

the Decision Made

A more effective decision can be made when one is clear about his or her beliefs and values. The

assumptions that one make about himself or herself, about others in the world and the way he or she expect

things to be are known as beliefs. In an ambiguous and uncertain world, a basis for decision-making can be

provided by the beliefs as they are the valuable resources. Since values do not have boundaries or

limitations, they are usually fair stable. Some of the common values that have been identified are respect for

life, responsibility, tolerance, unity, freedom, fairness, truthfulness and love.

This community decision has been made on the values of fairness, responsibility, and love. Love is

related to helping other and caring for them. Fairness is related to equality and responsibility is about caring

for the future caring for others and caring for yourself. There is various kind of people in the neighborhood

that require love and equality, like, elders who are living with kin and living alone, and young people, who

have been in trouble with the legal system. For making this effective community decision it is necessary to

understand that shared accountability and leadership is required by everyone in the community.

The people must understand their own interests and values. The leaders of the community need to

value the better use of existing resources, a range of in-kind, informal supports, resources and funding,

youth as stakeholders and resources, the challenges and strengths of communities and families, inclusion

and diversity, and the local decision –making process. In order to understand the outcomes expected by the

people of the community, it is necessary to understand their principles and values. Communicating in ways

that make people feel respected, building trust and listening to each other are some of the important values

that are embodied within a community decision making. In order to implement this decision effectively, one

must make sure that the decision addresses the different valued upheld by different people in the

community.

The Relevant Theory of Human Freedom, Consciousness and/or Reality and Analysis of the

Theory and its Approach towards the Decision

No aspect of mind is more puzzling and familiar than our conscious experience of the world and self

and consciousness. In current theorizing about the mine, the central issue is the problem of consciousness.

Since this decision is based on the community, therefore, it is based on the collective consciousness. The set

of shared moral attitudes, ideas and beliefs that operate as a unifying force within the society, is known as

collective consciousness. In the collective consciousness, a collective understanding by a specific group of

people is created by the societal experiences.

This understanding, therefore, impact the behaviors, beliefs and values of the group. Since,

responsibility is one of the values related to this community decision; therefore, this decision has been

influenced by the consciousness. Conscious attitudes are required in handling a responsibility. The condition

of the subject within the whole of society is referred to the term, ‘collective consciousness’ (Ventegodt &

Et.al, 2006). The totality of sentiments and beliefs common the average members of a society are known as

collective consciousness. Generation to one another is linked through the collective consciousness.

Construction of certain societal constructs and norms is assured by the collective consciousness.

Because of the connection of the human freedom to the moral responsibility, the issue of human freedom

remains vital (Hampshire, 1971). The perspectives of moral responsibility are intimately connected to the

social justice and policy. Since the decision is based on the community, therefore, it is related to the freedom

needed for moral responsibility. The power to act is known as freedom. Perfection in the acts can be attained

by freedom if it is directed towards good causes.

Conclusion

The central factor to this decision of the community is the residents of the neighborhood. In the

delivery and design of resources and services, they must be perceived as the critical co-investors. While this

decision is complex and challenging, there is a possibility that communities can succeed in transforming

their neighborhood with the right level of resources and support. In order to make the decision, one must

invite all the community members for investment as unified support around the decision can be found by

engaging a broad cross-section of the community. For bringing the change of successful neighborhood where

families and children can thrive and avail all the opportunities and support, one of the powerful engines that

have been identified, is the community-decision making.

A shared commitment to build local accountability and capacity, to challenge the inequities that

have impacted the current conditions, and to achieve improved results for neighborhoods, families and

children, is known as the community decision-making. The community decision-making process enables the

community to assure the ability and sustainability to take desired programs to scale through supportive

public policies, strategic alliances, and result-driven financing strategies. In order to assure the well-being of

all families, the factor which is critical to empowering and mobilizing the community is engaging in a results-

driven process starting with the end in mind. 

To assure accountability, monitor progress, make decisions and assessing the needs of the

community, use of reliable, relevant and timely data must be promoted. In achieving the results agenda of

the community, the community stakeholders must be supported as accountable partners and co-investors.

One must develop disagreements rather than consensus in order to make more effective decisions. One is

not ready to make a decision without a disagreement. The concerns must be first addressed effectively

before making the decision. Figure out the reasons due to which the people disagree and consider both sides

of the issue.

Adequate disagreements are demanded by the right decision. The plausible is converted into the

right, and the right is then further converted into a good decision by the disagreement. By investing in

neighborhoods, the communities are working towards bringing change in the future of families and children.

From text:

The Theory of Innate IdeasPlato’s belief that genuine knowledge can only be achieved through our reasoning abilities means that, in epistemological terms, he is a rationalist. In contrast, philosophers who, like Aristotle, believe that we can gain true knowledge through our sense experience are known as empiricists (though Aristotle was, like Plato, also seeking universal knowledge). As we will see in the pages ahead, this division between rationalism and empiricism has endured since first introduced by Plato and Aristotle, and it has remained one of the core issues in epistemology.Rationalism The position that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge or, more strongly, that it is the unique path to knowledge.

Empiricism The position that the senses (and sense experience) are primary in acquiring knowledge.

The world of the ancient Greeks comprised, primarily, islands and seas, thus leading them to infer that the whole world floated on water. In what ways might our current understanding of the universe also be inaccurate?

One of the strongest arguments that rationalists advance to support their view that genuine knowledge is based on reason, not sense experience, is that humans seem to possess knowledge that could not possibly be derived solely from our experiences in the world.

For example, the principles of mathematics and logic have for the most part been developed independently of experience. And although these principles can be applied to objects and events in the world, their truth is not dependent on these objects or events. In the dialogue Meno, Plato uses a dramatic example to illustrate this very point.

Socrates is discussing his belief in the immortality of the soul with his friend Meno, along with his conviction that each soul begins life with essential knowledge. Such knowledge is latent in the sense that it requires experience to activate it, but it is in no way dependent on experience for its existence or truth. We need only to remember or “recollect” this knowledge for it to be brought to consciousness and used by us. Such knowledge is considered to be innate because it is present at birth.

How can the existence of such knowledge be demonstrated?

Socrates’ solution is ingenious. He calls over an illiterate slave boy and presents him with the following problem: Socrates draws on the ground a square two feet by two feet (four feet square) and asks the boy to draw a second square that is exactly twice the size of the first square. The boy’s first idea is to double the sides of the square to four feet by four feet, but he sees immediately that this solution is wrong. Through careful questioning, Socrates guides the boy through a systematic solution and geometric proof of the problem.

Each step of the way, the boy seems to “know” the correct response, though he has never been taught any form of mathematics.

Reality Is the Eternal Realm of the Forms: Plato

•Plato attempted to resolve the conflict between an unchanging, ultimate truth and the everyday flux of our circumstantial lives by proposing two different “worlds”: the world of “becoming,” of our physical world; and the world of “being,” a realm of eternal and unchanging truths that is knowable through the exercise of reason.

•This world of “being” is populated by ideal “forms,” archetypes or essences of everything that exists. In our everyday world of the senses, we experience only imperfect examples of, or “participants” in, these “forms,” but through careful study, reflection, and reasoning, we can begin to apprehend the true and eternal nature of the forms. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is a vivid metaphor for this quest to understand the ultimate essences or truths of things.

•Plato’s belief that genuine knowledge of the essential forms can be achieved through “innate” or inborn ideas and the faculty of reason makes him a rationalist. In contrast, philosophers who believe that true knowledge is best achieved through sense experience are empiricists. This conflict between rationalists and empiricists has both divided and enriched the study of epistemology since the time of Plato and Aristotle.

Reality Is the Natural World: Aristotle

•Aristotle broke with his teacher Plato’s conception of a divided reality. As a philosophical naturalist, Aristotle was devoted to the idea that the nature of reality is best apprehended through close and careful attention to, and study of, sense experience, making him an empiricist.

•Whereas Plato believed, for example, in a changing and ultimately mortal human body that was inhabited by an unchanging and immortal soul, Aristotle argued that that the soul cannot be separated from the body; that we as humans are entirely creatures of nature.

•In Aristotle’s metaphysical system, there are two categories of “things”: matter (the physicality of a thing) and form (the essence of a thing). All things contain within themselves their potential, or entelechy. Aristotle’s metaphysical framework consists of the Four Causes: Material Cause; Formal Cause; Efficient Cause; and Final Cause.

We Constitute Our World: Kant

•Immanuel Kant sought to resolve the disputes between empiricism and rationalism by refuting Hume’s radical skepticism and its bleak conclusions. Kant proposed a theory of “transcendental idealism,” which holds that there are truths about the world that are both necessary and universal. Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in epistemology was his belief that the core question was not “How does the human mind come to know an essentially unknowable world?” but rather “How does the human mind construct a knowable world?” That is, whereas the empiricists Locke, Berkeley, and Hume conceived of the human mind as a passive tabula rasa, Kant argued that the mind is an active agent in the construction of knowledge. We come to an understanding of the world through an interaction between the data of sense experience and what Kant describes as “the faculties of the mind” to sort, organize, and make sense of that data.

•Kant’s metaphysics describes twelve basic categories of the mind that help us to gain synthetic a priori knowledge, which (1) is necessary and universally true, (2) can be discovered independently of experience: a priori, and (3) provides us with genuine information regarding our experience of the world: synthetic.

•Kant makes a distinction between two kinds of reality: phenomenal reality (the world as we constitute it and experience it) and noumenal reality (the world beyond our perceptions, about which we can achieve knowledge through the application of “pure reason”).

A German philosopher considered by many to be the greatest thinker of the eighteenth century, Kant attempted to synthesize the two competing schools of the modern period, rationalism and empiricism, by showing the important role both experience and reason play in constructing our knowledge of the world. His works include the Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787) and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783).

In the same way that Hume’s concept of the “self”—as a transitory stream of sensations moving randomly through the “theater” of our minds—is an integral part of his overall epistemology, so Kant’s concept of the “self” is merely one dimension of an intricately and elaborately constructed philosophy that integrates both epistemology and metaphysics in a seamless integration. Kant’s thinking is so revolutionary and profound in its implications that philosophies are typically classified as pre-Kantian and post-Kantian. Many of the modern movements in philosophy can trace their intellectual origins to Kant’s thought, including existentialism, phenomenology, pragmatism, and linguistic philosophy.

At the time that Kant came onto the scene, the raging controversy in philosophy was between rationalism and empiricism, the twin movements that we have been exploring in these chapters through the philosophies of Plato and Descartes (rationalists) as well as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume (empiricists). Rationalists were convinced that genuine knowledge is best achieved through our rational capacities, whereas empiricists were equally certain that all knowledge is derived from sense experience. As we have seen, while the rationalists viewed the human mind as an active agent—reflecting, analyzing, deducing—the empiricists viewed the mind as a passive receiver of impressions and experiences.

Both approaches are vulnerable to serious conceptual problems and challenging questions when it comes to their ability to construct a coherent, compelling theory of knowledge. Once Descartes introduces the “evil genius” as a vehicle for his radical doubt of virtually everything, it’s difficult for him to banish the “evil genius” from his epistemological kingdom of rational certainty. And the epistemological regression displayed in the thinking of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume culminates in the depressing conclusion that genuine knowledge of anything isn’t possible: not of the external world, not scientific laws, not God, not even the “self.” It is no wonder that Kant took the measure of this sad state of affairs and described it as “a scandal in philosophy.”

But, unlike the other thinkers of his day, Kant also had the insight to fully appreciate the dire threat that Hume’s virulent skepticism posed to epistemology and metaphysics in general, and to the “new physics” of science being championed by Isaac Newton and others. If Hume was right, and we are doomed to passively view the impressions and ideas presented to our minds, unable to connect them to each other, to an external world, or to anything else for that matter—then we might as well give up on discovering genuine and certain knowledge in any area of experience. It was the startling recognition of this threat that, in Kant’s words, “first interrupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction.” Kant describes this intellectually galvanizing experience in the following passages from his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783).

Describing the rationalist’s attempt to have reason “give birth” to the principle of cause and effect as “… a bastard of the imagination, impregnated by experience” is strong language, to be sure! And yet Kant is convinced that to erect a legitimate framework for knowledge, he must begin by addressing directly and honestly Hume’s incisive, relentless attack on the scope of reason, which he (Hume) considers to be the “slave of the passions.”

It is this open-eyed honesty that Kant found lacking in the other thinkers of the day, contemptible behavior that caused him to observe “was positively painful to see how utterly his opponents … missed the point of the problem.”

Yet as concerned as Kant is to establish an irrefutable theory of knowledge that will serve as a legitimate grounding for modern science, he is just as intent on making sure this epistemological framework also incorporates other a priori knowledge. Kant considers such knowledge to be “metaphysical” in the sense that its ultimate justification and truth are based on reason, independent of sense experience, and it includes areas of experience such as

•Mathematics, arithmetic, logic •Knowledge of the “self” •The possibility of free will •Moral principles •The existence of God