Final Research Project Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Final Project - Research Paper Example I started by looking at the main company website which is at http://www.chevron.com/ I was interested to find out how the company chooses to present itself and so I looked under the tab â€Å"About Chevron† which was on the top left of the screen. There was a short statement: â€Å"At Chevron, we are relentlessly focused on producing safe, reliable energy now and for the future. How are we doing it? By applying the energy we have most in abundance Human energy.† This was not what I expected, because I know already that the main product area is fossil fuels like oil and gas, and I did not expect it to focus on its people. On other tabs there was information on the manufacturing side of things, and distribution through pipelines, shipping and gas stations. The company profile section provided the most factual information such as the founding date in 1879, in an area near Los Angeles, California. The global workforce is about 60,000 employeees and there are another 4,000 s ervice station employees who are linked to the main company. Its production figures are a little out of date, quoting 2.7 million barrels of net oil-equivalent production per day. From its location in California the company expanded in the 1920s to ventures in the Philippines, Alaska and Colombia in the quest for oil. In the 1930s they worked in Saudi Arabia and then from the 1940s through the 1970s they built pipelines to transport the oil from their wells. In 2001 the company merged with Texaco to become the second largest U.S. based energy company. The future ventures of the company focus on the Gulf of Mexico and Kazakhstan. There is a recognition that all kinds of energy are going to be needed in the future, not just oil and gas, and so I was pleased to note that a lot of money is being invested in research. This is an area that I would be interested in working for. The company is bound to present itself in the best possible light and so I looked next for external sources that would give more neutral information. The website www.business.com/directory/ provided a link to the Chevron company website that I had just been looking at, and it also had a link to the Wall Street Journal share prices for Chevron. This is the second source that I used. It gives an up to date snapshot of the company’s performance on the markets and I noted that the share price over the last 12 months had risen: Chevron stock prices, year to 1/14/11 Source: http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=CVX As my third source I followed the course instructions to look at the Hoovers business information page and there I found a list of subsidiaries and locations for the Chevron company. I was interested to note that Chevron U.S.A. which manages the US side of the business has its headquarters in San Ramon, California. The offices and research areas are not located in the same place as the oil and gas fields. I was reassured by my research on the company because I foun d its home web pages to be professional and positive. The market trend over a year is positive, with share prices rising despite the increasing costs of finding oil resources as older fields are getting used up. The company has been involved in mergers, and shows flexibility in its links with other countries, always looking for new sources of raw material. I could see also that there were areas of the business outside pure manufacturing, like the development of additives and various kinds of research. In

Questions on Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Questions on Philosophy - Essay Example What problem did Kant find with traditional metaphysics and how does he aim to solve it? (Think Descartes on this also) He thinks he is writing for metaphysicians and Hume because Hume is skeptic about the possibility of metaphysics (SparkNotes Editors). 3. How is it that Hume awoke Kant from his â€Å"dogmatic slumber?† What was it about Hume’s philosophy that was so awakening to Kant? What were the reasons Hume’s observations were so unsettling to Kant? Kant said that Hume's skeptical challenge is what first spurred him toward his critical philosophy. Hume asks how we can make inferences regarding experience: how can I predict what will happen in the future based on what has happened in the past? In order to do so, Hume suggests, I must know some sort of "uniformity principle" that says that events in the future will follow the same sorts of general laws that they have followed in the past. But how can I know this uniformity principle? It isn't logically or nec essarily true, so I can't simply infer it prior to experience like I can with mathematical knowledge. However, I fall into a vicious circle if I claim that I know it from experience, since I need to already have the uniformity principle in order to infer that—the uniformity principle has been true in the past, and it will continue to be true in the future. Thus, Hume concludes that we cannot know that future events will follow the same laws as past events: we just get into the habit of expecting it (SparkNotes Editors). 4. What questions are the ones that Kant thinks need to be answered first if metaphysics as a science is to be possible at all? Which is the question at the foundation of all knowledge? Metaphysics is unlike math or science in that its reach exceeds its grasp. It aspires to know what it cannot know. In finding itself bounded, however, reason also explores the full extent and possibility of human knowledge. While reason cannot tell us anything about things in t hemselves, it can be used to examine our own faculties. Kant redefines metaphysics as a "critique," an attempt to examine how knowledge is structured and justified (SparkNotes Editors). 5. What does Kant mean by all of our judgments being either a priori or a posteriori and either analytic or synthetic? What are examples of each of them? How do these 4 designations of our objects of knowledge differ from the two that Hume argued there were? Kant distinguishes between a priori and a posteriori cognitions and between analytic and synthetic judgments. Knowledge we gain from experience is a posteriori, and what we can know independent of experience is a priori. A synthetic judgment is one whose predicate contains information not contained in the subject, and an analytic judgment is one whose predicate is a mere analysis of the subject. Kant claims that mathematics, natural science, and metaphysics all lay claim to synthetic a priori propositions—propositions that are necessarily but not trivially true, and can be known prior to experience. Since mathematics and pure natural science are well-established fields, he proposes to examine how their synthetic truths are possible a priori in the hope that this examination will shed light on the possibility of metaphysics as a science (SparkNotes Editors). 6. What is so peculiar about knowledge that is both synthetic and a priori? Be able to give examples of these and be able to describe how this is possible according to Kant. Kant