Why I Should Win The University Philosophy Club Essay Contest :: Writing Jacksonville University Essays

Why I Should Win The 1997 Jacksonville University Philosophy Club Essay Contest The Jacksonville University Philosophy Club is sponsoring its eighth annual undergraduate essay contest. The best argumentative essay, from any discipline, will receive the first place prize. I will demonstrate here why you will be compelled to award that prize to the essay that you are currently undertaking. We start this argument with the following premise, known as the Conservation of Energy. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This is a basis of physics, and no evidence is brought against it that refutes its certainty. If we accept it, it follows that the energy in the cosmos must be finite. If we posited an infinite amount of energy, we could not speak of conserving it. Additionally, the stuff of the cosmos cannot be infinite or w e would face the contradiction that new energy would be coming into existence from nothing; ex nihilo. From this examination we must accept the entailed premise that the amount of energy must be finite. The second premise of the argument is that all becoming is of necessity. Perhaps, it is easier to frame this idea within a format of cause and effect. For the event, represented by the placeholder; Z, to be any different than it is, its cause (or causes), symbolized; Y must have necessarily been different in some manner. It follows logically that for Y to be different, then X must differ. This, like the energy in the cosmos, can not amount to an infinite set of possibilities. The possible outcomes of a pair of rolled standard die are a finite number of outcomes (six to the second power). The number of possible outcomes of any finite set of probabilities must be finite (albeit perhaps incomprehensibly large). If we extrapolate the number of outcomes from the huge number of finite possibilities we do not ever, arrive at an infinite amount. Although, one odd possibility does remain. We may come upon the case where (for the sake of simplicity) Z causes A. The chain of causes resumes wher e it once before began. Subsequently, time is infinite. It extends forever toward the past and forever into the future. We have now only to piece these premises together. Energy is a fixed quantum within the cosmos. Time proceeds through an unending series of becoming from necessity (with acknowledged shortcomings, I may interchange the terms; cause and effect).