Anarchy Without Adjectives: Don't Wanna Be Owned By Myself

This is the second post in a series explicating my objections to a presentation, "Anarchy without Adjectives," which I attended last Tuesday. For this post to make sense, you will probably want to read the previous post wherein I outline the content of the presentation, and present some of the problems I see with the notion of justified ownership that the speaker put forth. Today I continue with an assault on the fundamental assumption of initial argument, that we each own ourselves.

Although the speaker noted that many people simply accept this assumption from the get go, for those less inclined to agree that we obviously own ourself he presented an argument by elimination. His argument went as follows: suppose someone else were to own you. Why, then you would be obliged to ask their permission before taking any action, as you would be using their property. Alternatively assume that each person owned equal share in every other person. In this case you would have an even harder time getting anything done, as you would have to ask every other person on the Earth, or perhaps simply a majority of them, for permission before enacting a course of action. Personally, I find these arguments compelling, and agree that no other person ought to have ownership over myself. But does that imply that I own myself? Indeed, what does it even mean to talk about owning one's self?

To answer these questions, let us consider the conclusion of the presenter's argument, that individuals should not have limitations placed upon what they do with their property. In order to reach this conclusion, we must accept that self ownership means that individuals should not have limitations placed upon what they do. However, very few world views hold that individual should act without limitation, and here I regret that I have not studied Nietzsche's philosophy more. Most tellingly, even the presenter's argument placed limits on what individuals should do, namely, individuals should not infringe upon the ability of others to utilize their property however they see fit.

If I truly own myself, from whence does this caveat arise? During the presentation the speaker asserted that ethics was more than a matter of preference, a point I, as an ethicist, find rather attractive, so I shall not argue it, although I am not sure that it is true. However, if it is true then the speaker must posit some moral obligation on us forbidding our interference with the property of others. If the source of said obligation cannot be discerned, then it seems reasonable to expect that it may present further restrictions upon our actions.

What I mean is the following: if something obliges us to let others do what the will with their property, now with the caveat that this extends only as far as others follow this same principle of non-interference, then what is to say that this something, shall we call it ethics, respect, or politeness, further obliges us to provide for the health of those about us, insofar as it does not infringe upon our ability to provide for our own health? Indeed, as long as this obligation stems from an unspecified source, one has no hope of nailing down what other obligations we may or may not have.

This seems to leave two options if one wishes to salvage this line of argument. One might discern the origin of our obligation to let others do what they will with their property, then outline whatever auxiliary obligations this original cause also entails. Or one might simply give up on the obligation to let others do what they will with their property entirely, but this seems to lead to one of the nastier forms of anarchy, wherein might makes right and people do entirely as they will if no one is able and inclined to stop them. I think either case highlights the difficulties inherent in making atomizing statements like, "everyone should be free to do with their property as they will," in a world where we are all so fundamentally interconnected. This, to me, is the foundational flaw with all reasoning in this vein, our actions cannot be considered in a vacuum, they will inevitably have repercussions on others, so giving one individual sovereignty must necessarily diminish the sovereignty of others.

Since the school week begins again tomorrow, it is not clear when I shall continue with my response, but rest assured, I have more thoughts on this topic to present for your scrutiny.

We Shall Overcome, Someday

Michigan recently passed a bill to prevent public institutions from providing benefits to couples who are not legally married; here is an article on the topic. Although the bill is being challenged and I hope it is overturned, I am not interested, or able, to discuss its legality. I did not study to be a lawyer, I studied to be a philosopher, so what I want to talk about is how very wrong this bill is!

It seems clear that some of the support for this bill originates from an antipathy toward same sex couples; insofar as this antipathy wells out of some sort of Christian sentiment, this makes me sick. There is an incredible hypocrisy within the American "Christian" political movement when it comes to sexual mores. Although premarital sex and adultery are condemned from the pulpit they are ignored when Christians go political, in fact, I have noticed a surprisingly widespread sentiment among Christians that premarital sex "isn't that bad" or "is a fact of life." Perhaps premarital sex and adultery are easier to accept as facts of life because they are things that heterosexuals might desire, making this a classic case of trying to remove the splinter from the eye of the homosexual community whilst ignoring the plank in our own. To make it absolutely clear, I am NOT advocating that anybody attempt to legislate against premarital sex or adultery, simply that people who have somehow accepted that these things should be dealt with in the realm of morality, not legality, extend that understanding to same sex couples. Finally, I must admit that comparing homosexuality, premarital sex, and adultery is not the fairest of comparisons. Adultery seems, by fair, the most harmful and disrespectful of the three, so why are we taking benefits away from same sex couples and blithely permitting them to adulterers?

At best this bill might be described as a way for the state to save a little bit of money, which is something states always seem to need to do. However, even in this more charitable interpretation the bills supporters do not end up looking terribly moral. Now, instead of passing the bill in order to hurt a group of people with which they have a difference of opinion, they are simply looking for a group they perceive as unpopular enough that they can summarily divest them of benefits without office threatening repercussions. Less disgusting, perhaps, but still disgusting.

This bill also highlights why marriage for heterosexuals and domestic partnerships for homosexuals is not an adequate, effective, or moral solution. As long as different couples have different commitments binding them it will be easy and, therefore, tempting to set different standards and benefits for them. Perhaps we will simply have to abolish marriage as a civil institution and issue all couples domestic licenses to reach a compromise with the hard line religious movements, which, insofar as marriage is a religious ceremony, ought to be done anyway according to the Constitution. In the end, two different types of "marriage" for two "different" types of couples is morally untenable, separate but equal is still inherently unequal.

In my last sentence there is an implicit comparison between the Gay Rights movement and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's, which is why I am writing this post on Martin Luther King Jr. Day specifically. I think that such comparisons are quite warranted, in fact I would be willing to call the struggle for Gay Rights the Civil Rights movement of our era, since it is, at heart, just that, a struggle for civil rights. By making this assertion I do not mean to imply that we have accomplished our struggle for racial equality and now we can move on. ("But we have a black president now, we must be done!" "No, BAD reductionist! The fact that we consider Obama black is itself something worthy of unpacking.") I simply mean that Gay Rights have been the focus of much public attention and legal action recently.

Although the struggle for racial equality may still be ongoing, I think it is entirely appropriate highlight another struggle on MLKJ Day, so long as one does not try to diminish the importance of racial equality, or any other form of equality. To borrow a concept that I have heard attributed to the Third Wave Feminist movement, in order for any of us to be free from oppression, we must all be free from oppression. I can think of two worthwhile ways to interpret that off the top of my head. As long as anyone is oppressed we must still accept the idea that oppression can be justified, which opens everyone up to the risk of becoming included in an underclass. Or, as long as anyone is oppressed, we must find ourselves entangled in the system of oppression, even if as unwilling oppressors, and systems of oppression hurt all moral beings, be they "oppressed" or "oppressor." I rather favor the second interpretation, but both are interesting.

So, today let us dare to dream of a future free of oppression, then do what we can to move toward such a bright future. We shall overcome, someday.

Immanuel Never Hit With a Train

Today's title is brought to you by my feeling that I've already made enough puns using Kant's last name. It is also the last post focusing on running people over with trains for the near future, I think. I have written about Kant a number of times, and you are welcome to search my blog for his name if you want to read more of my thoughts regarding his ethical philosophies, but I think this post will be self-contained in that respect. However, I hope you are current on our conversations on Trains, Organs, and Liberals.

When last we spoke, we ran into the odd problem that taking someone's organs to save the lives of many other people seemed immoral, while directing a train to run over someone if it meant saving the lives of many other people seemed quite moral. I feel we can tie the difference back to Kant's categorical imperitive, which has been explained as an obligation to recognize other humans as moral agents, rather than simply tools to accomplish our own goals. When we harvest someone's organs to save the lives of others, we are using that person as a means to help those other people, if we divert a train into someone to avoid it hitting other people, the first person getting hit isn't a means, it is a consequence.

This highlights the interesting difference between intended and foreseeable consequences. If we do something in order for a certain result to happen, it is an intended consequence. For example, if we knock someone out and steal all their organs then taking their organs was an intended consequence, it is the reason that we did something. On the other hand, if we recognize that something must occur should we take a given action, but its occurrence does not lead to a desired result, it is a foreseeable consequence. Suppose we divert the train into the lone worker to save the lives of five workers. Although we know that the lone worker will die, their death does not lead to the desired result, saving the other five workers. If that worker had not been there we still could have saved the five workers by diverting the train. On a related note, this highlights the difference between the scenario where we divert the train into a single person to save five and that where we push a single person in front of the train to save five.

Thus we have a fairly reasonable explanation why the Trolley Problem and the organ donation scenario seem to evoke different moral responses despite the fact that in both cases the outcomes, who lives and dies, remains the same. This is possible because Kantian ethics, like liberal ethics, examines the ethics of actions in themselves, not just of consequences as Utilitarianism does.

So, to recap, initially we introduced the Trolley Problem and discussed the relationship between moral intuition and our critique of ethical philosophy. The second post examined the moral implications of inaction and the alternate organ donation scenario. The third post discussed liberal ethics, which came up as an ethical system in which looting people for their organs would not be the apparently moral thing to do. And finally we discussed why our moral intuition might see this distinction between hitting a person with a train and looting their organs.

While this entire discussion may seem totally tongue-in-cheek and not at all applicable to the "real world," I believe otherwise. Of course it is somewhat irreverent, I am writing it, however, it addresses issues that we as a society should consider, given that we do have the amazing ability to move organs from one person to another. I hope you found the serious amusing, interesting, or, at the very least, thought provoking!

Crazy Liberals

As I mentioned yesterday, when one refers to liberals in the context of ethics it means something quite different than it does in reference to modern United States politics. Liberal ethical systems are based on the idea that people have certain rights and the moral thing to do is respect those rights. Historically, the idea of liberal ethics can be traced back as far as the Magna Carta which codified protections that some people had from the power of the monarchy. By its nature liberalism is closely tied to the concept of "rule of law," which refers to the notion that the highest authority in government should be a stable, public, codified set of laws rather than the dictates of a leader or governing body.

On the other hand, I don't know of any liberal political philosophy that predates Thomas Hobbes. If you have ever heard the phrase, "nasty, brutish, and short," used to describe human lives you are at least minimally familiar with his philosophy. He is also the inspiration for the name of Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes, just one of the many reasons that it is my favorite comic! Anyway, Hobbes argued that left to our own devices humans live pretty miserable lives, see above "nasty, brutish, and short," and in order to avoid this barbarous conditions we cede our sovereignty to some central government which, in turn coordinates the actions of its citizens to minimize casualties. If you are familiar with the saying, "those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither," you have about the antithesis of Hobbes' philosophy. Of course, the freedoms that Hobbes asks us to sacrifice are those like our sovereign right to kill other people if we deem it expedient, and the security we gain mainly comes from the agreement of our fellows to sacrifice the same right.

More recently, and more recognizable in the United States philosophy of government, John Locke was another political philosopher. In contrast to Hobbes, Locke tends to focus on those individual rights in which the government ought not interfere for citizens to lead fulfilling lives, rather that which individual rights ought be forgone in order to lead fulfilling lives. This difference is quite understandable given their historical contingencies, Hobbes lived in an era of great turmoil and violence in England and, rather than trying to justify some existing despotic power, he was simply attempting to discern what form of government could provide safety to its citizens. On the other hand, Locke was a rebel sympathizer, and was attempting to provide philosophical justification for overturning the government.

One thing the two authors have in common is that rights take precedence over government. In Hobbes government is an essential outgrowth of the most fundamental right that each of us possesses, the right to protect our lives. On our own we cannot be assured that we will prevail against whatever threats, be they human or natural, assail our very livelihood. Grouping together in governments is the only logical course Hobbes sees to secure a modicum of freedom from all out warfare against all our neighbors. Locke, by contrast, sees the government as a threat to our rights, a perspective that also requires that rights be more important than the current government.

Of course, Locke sees rights as including much more ephemeral concepts than Hobbes, whereas Hobbes rights include things such as the right to do whatever is possible to protect one's life, which by its very nature cannot be taken away, as there is no way to prevent someone from exercising it, Locke includes things such as property ownership in his notion of rights. Whether or not owning property is a fundamental right, it is quite possible to prevent someone from exercising that right. I have always felt the phrase, "we hold these rights to be self-evident," to mean that the founding fathers couldn't really come up with good reasons to justify the rights that they were about to list. Taking liberty for example, even if I do have a right to liberty it is quite possible for liberty to be taken from me, so in what sense that right is "self-evident," is, in fact, not evident to me.

To bring it back to the topic at hand, mandatory organ "donation," it seems quite obvious that an ethical system that places personal welfare, as represented by rights, above communal welfare, represented by government, could effectively argue against taking someone's organs, even if would benefit many other people. Of course, liberal systems do not take this to its logical extreme, they are not libertarians after all, and permit individual rights to be infringed upon as long as it is a result of some infraction on the part of the person whose rights are to be curtailed. As such, it would not be incompatible with such a system to have mandatory organ "donation" from people convicted of some form of crime. Nor would it be incompatible for such a thing to be strictly forbidden to do to anyone of course, it would just depend on the specific code of rights.

The question then becomes how do we explain the divergence between the Trolley Problem and that of mandatory "donation" in a liberal system. I doubt anyone would say that by pulling the switch to divert the train away from five workers, to the detriment of one worker, in some way violates the workers rights. And, if it does, wouldn't leaving the switch as it is violate the rights of the five workers who died? If there is no way to satisfy all the rights involved in a situation, then the idea of a right based morality loses some plausibility, unless one ranks different rights in some order of priority. In an attempt to explain one possible difference between running a train into someone to save five other people and taking the organs from someone to save five other people I may talk a bit more about my man Kant tomorrow. However, are people bored with this rather lengthy ethical consideration of trains and organs? Would you rather I talked about something else, and, if so, any suggestions as to what that might be?

You Really Decide Who Lives and Dies

Yesterday I discussed the Trolley Problem, and today's post will not make much sense if you are not familiar with the set up explained therein. Today I would like to address the 10% of the population that would not switch the track to save five lives at the expense of one.

It really is your choice, even if you do nothing and let five people die, that is a choice you made if you could have made it otherwise. I emphasize this because the only reason that I can think of for someone to choose to let five people die rather than letting one person die, excluding possible personal reasons for preferring specific individuals live or die, is the belief that by throwing the switch they are responsible for the resulting death in a way that they are not responsible for the five deaths should they refuse to throw the switch. It would be interested to test this assumption by reversing the situation, and requiring the participant to throw the switch if they want to divert the train away from the one person into the five, to test that it isn't the case that 10% of the population just wants to maximize carnage. I would also be interested in seeing the results of a situation where everyone will die unless the person on the lever chooses one group to die. I would not be surprised if some people let everyone die in order to avoid the responsibility of choosing a subset to save, dismayed perhaps, but not surprised.

I think that it is important for people to accept that, if it is within their power to alter the outcome of an event and they fail to attempt to do so, then they must bear some responsibility for the outcome. A popular quote whose provenance is not clear captures this idea, "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." This emphasizes that one of the causes of the evil is the inaction of the good people who might have otherwise prevented it from coming to pass. So, even if one abstains from touching the track switch, the blood of the five dead workers is on one's hands as much as the single dead worker's would be if the switch were thrown.

However, this view of morality does chronically cause me problems when I consider the question of forcibly "donating" the organs from prisoners convicted of violent crimes to less sordid citizens whose lives would be ended without them. This is yet another example of ethical theories being critiqued based on moral intuition. I feel that it would be immoral for us to kill prisoners and harvest their organs for use by other people, yet I cannot find convincing differences between this scenario and the Trolley Problem. Because one can harvest multiple organs from one donor, it seems likely that many lives would be saved at the expense of one. Even more disturbingly, the Trolley Problem makes no reference to the civic contributions of the workers involved, leading me to wonder if a more apt metaphor would be choosing one citizen to provide organs for a group of other needy citizens.

One might object that there are quality of life issues and uncertainty about the outcome. We do not know that all the organ transplants will be successful, so we may end up saving fewer lives than we expect, and even after a successful transplant the recipient must live with a regimen of immuno-suppressors in order to avoid rejecting the transplant. However, if we put stock in these technical objections we must also agree that if transplanting techniques became so advanced that transplants were nearly always successful and the side effects of a successful transplant were minimal, then we would accept that mandatory transplantation would be the ethical thing to do.

On the other hand, perhaps they are. Is it more ethical to allow death to break families apart when we have the techniques to prevent it, merely lacking the supply of organs? Especially considering that we put prisoners to death anyway, with no noticeable benefit to society? Since we posses the technology, are we not choosing the life of a murderer over that of a loving mother when we fail to reallocate the murderer's organs to the mother?

The most obvious place to take the discussion from here is to the liberal notion of ethics, that is responsibilities based on human rights, as a notion that humans have sovereignty over their own bodies is the most obvious rebuttal to forced organ donation. One might also discuss the ethical implications of technology, as without the means to perform organ transplants we would not be presented with this quandary. Since either of these would probably fill up a blog post on its own, I shan't discuss either here, but I may address them at some later date, or not. Until then, enjoy your organs while society believes you are the best person to be using them!

You Decide Who Lives and Dies

Imagine this: A train is speeding toward a tunnel within which five of your co-workers are performing maintenance on the track. If the train goes into the tunnel there will be no where for them to be safe, and they will die. You cannot reach them, but you are standing by a lever to switch the track, which would divert the train to a side tunnel. However, another of your co-workers is preparing that tunnel for maintenance, and if you do that they will certainly die. What do you do?

Thought experiments of this sort are called Trolley Problems, and they come in a wide array of variations. They are an attempt to probe what we think is the right thing to do. For example, more people would switch the train to the side track than would push someone in front of the train, even if doing so would slow it down, so the end result would be the same, one dead to save five. On the other hand, when told that they knew the person they were pushing was responsible for sabotaging the train so that the five workers were placed in danger, people once again are quite willing to sacrifice the one for the many.

A recent article in MSU's newspaper, The State News, reported that a professor was using virtual reality technology to see what people actually decided in this situation. This is, of course, inherently interesting, but it is the response of Professor Lindemann, a professor of philosophy, that I truly wish to address. Of course, one must interpret it with a large dose of goodwill, both because who knows how accurate the story is to Professor Lindemann's actual thoughts and because newspapers are not the best forum for detailed philosophical exposition, perhaps to the detriment of our civilization. Professor Lindemann is said to have raised two main objections to the nature of the experiment.

Her first objection is that the evidence from this study is not valuable since the subjects were college-age and, "don’t have much life experience," to quote the article, not the Professor. I am unsure exactly what this means, to be honest. Unless we happen to be ethicists, what relevant life experiences do we gain as we age that would significantly help us make such a decision? I'm significantly older than the average undergraduate, but I don't believe myself any more qualified to make that decision than I was four years ago. Of course, I am still fairly young, at least that is what I keep telling myself, so maybe I still lack the relevant experience. Which brings me to my furthermore. If even people in their late twenties lack this information, then a fairly large portion of the population does not have it, so why are we uninterested in their moral position?

However, this first difference of opinion is merely a pedantic point compared to the second. Professor Lindemann goes on to say, "the trouble with the trolley problem is that if you actually test people with it, you only know what their instincts are. It doesn’t tell you much about the right thing to do." Prima facie this seems reasonable. The study tests what people do, ergo the results might tell you what people think is the right thing to do, but not what the right thing to do actually is. This overlooks one quirk of ethics that has, on occasion, irked me. Our attempts to codify a system of ethics tend to be primarily guided by our intuition about what is right and wrong. That is to say, aside from the accusation of logical inconsistency, about the only criticism which one can level against a well defined system of ethics is that it holds certain actions to be ethical that one feels should not be ethical.

For Kantian absolutism, which holds that one should choose moral rules to which one would wish everyone to adhere and then follow them in all situations, a common objection is that if a scared person ran into your basement then an angry man with a deadly weapon ran up asking after them one would be prohibited from lying to them, because the rule against lying should be respected at all times. For Utilitarianism, the ethical system that advocates maximizing the good, which we can call the happiness for simplicity, an analogous objection is that the system would condone murdering someone as long as they were universally disliked and caused a significant amount of grief for everyone with whom they interacted. Moral relativism is criticized because it cannot condemn sociopathic serial killers or the Nazis, depending on whether you are discussing personal or cultural relativism. In fact, the only trick to avoid this type of criticism seems to be remaining vague as to what the system actually requires of a moral agent, such as social contract and caring ethics do. Because we use our own moral intuition as the guide by which we calibrate our ethical theories, it does seem of some practical value to know what our moral instincts are.

Of course, it is certainly possible that this is entirely the wrong way to go about things. If ethics are supposed to codify what the right thing to do, and we are trying to obtain a system that tells us the right thing to do is the thing that we think is right to do, one might well ask of what use is the actual system. This is a valid concern, which unfortunately runs afoul of some pragmatic considerations. Namely, what else is there to consider? Any method for evaluating the value of different systems of ethics must, by its very nature, contain judgement about what is good in order to assess the systems. Once you have set what good is, you have already instituted, at some level, a system of ethics which, as it is integral to the judging process, cannot itself be evaluated using the judging process.

So, hopefully we can all agree that knowing that about 90% of people will throw the switch is interesting information. But what about the other 10%? Since it is late, and they are quite interesting in their own right, I think I shall leave berating them as a task for another post.

The Best Policy?

A while back it occurred to me, the obligation to be honest might be the most basic moral obligation. Consider theft; while we are told that it is wrong, in most cases we have never explicitly agreed that we would not steal something. On the other hand, whenever we make a non-coerced statement, we are asserting of our own free will that it is true. As such, lying is a more fundamental offense against our own moral agency than any externally induced moral obligation.

However, a couple days later I wondered if we owe everybody honesty, or whether it must be in some way earned. If a casual acquaintance asks me how I am, I am likely to answer with a simple, "ok," which exists in a sort of honesty-grey zone. But, does merely asking me how I am entitle them to the answer? One might respond that I could instead respond that I don't want to answer, but that seems likely to provoke further inquiry rather than discouraging it, or at very least seem moderately rude.

So, do we only owe honesty to those who have earned it through payment in kind? Or to those to whom we have debts of affection? Or is honesty owed to all as the most fundamental expression of our moral autonomy? This is why I much prefer conversation to exposition, I'm sure there is more interesting to be said on the topic, but I would much rather hash it out in dialogue.

Identity

Identity, it's who we are. But it isn't just who we are to ourselves, it is also who we are to other people. I shall try to keep my thoughts reasonably linear, but this is a topic that has come up in a variety of facets recently, so it may be difficult to isolate it from the surrounding context to discuss in a stand alone fashion.

One important facet of our identity is our cultural heritage. This, in some sense, grounds us to a specific place or places in history, "our ancestors were these people and came from here." It might be argued that many people in the United States lack this sense of heritage, but I think that it would be more accurate to say that they have incorporated the American ideal of settlers and intermixing as their heritage.

The question arises, what must be done to lay claim to a cultural heritage? I would assert that the act of laying honest claim to such a heritage validates itself. Of course, if I were to jokingly claim to be heir to the royal traditions of the Incas, this would not carry a lot of weight. However, if someone genuinely believes themselves to be an inheritor of a specific culture, then it is self evident that their identity is shaped by a sense of inclusion in that culture.

On the other hand, one might hold that, in order to possess a cultural heritage, one must take an active role in exploring that culture. While this is a perfectly valid way to organize people into culture groups, I think it is unnecessarily restrictive. At the risk of seeming ego maniacal, I will provide an illustrative example from my own life, simply because it is the only life with which I am familiar enough to say things with confidence.

Among my mix of European ancestors, I have some Germans and some Italians. And, while this has led me to study a little bit of German and put some effort into learning about German culture, I identify more strongly as Italian, despite having invested less effort in my Italian identity. I believe this is simply because my last name, if you unravel some Ellis Island mishaps, is Italian. So, just by identifying myself by name I am asserting my Italian identity, and it has caused people to react to me differently, thus further reinforcing my "Italian-ness."

And here we see how one's self identity and the manner in which others construct identity groups have such tricky interrelation. As I mentioned earlier, I think organizing people into identity groups based on putting effort into claiming a cultural identity is a valid way of organizing people, by which I mean that the groups that one obtains from such organization will likely share some distinguishing characteristics of interest and this organization doesn't seem to inherently promote ethnic cleansings. However, it may be quite at odds with how other people think about themselves, and indeed, how other people organize the world into cultural groups. So, it seems important to acknowledge that people can come to their identity through a variety of methods.

Further confusing the matter is the practice of assuming identities. For example, a European manga/anime enthusiast who feels their hobby confers a cultural legacy from Japan. First, let me note that this does not apply to every manga/anime enthusiast, just those who feel their hobby includes them in the penumbra of Japanese culture. Secondly, while this notion of cultural heritage may be at odds with the traditional notion of culture as inheritable from one's parents, it is entirely in keeping with both my criterion and, it seems to me, with the contrasting criterion from above, as the person in question both self identifies with Japanese culture and is investing effort into the cultivation of this cultural identity.

This highlights a further complication, in that essentializing Japanese culture down to anime and manga; or even anime, manga, and quirky gadgets; does Japanese culture a disservice, and, depending on one's views, may even be insulting. However, otaku are a part of Japanese culture, so one perhaps should not say that this view of Japanese culture is incorrect, insomuch as it is incomplete. So, toward what concept of a culture ought we direct our efforts in order to "earn" cultural inclusion?

So far we have mentioned three reasonable but incompatible methods for assigning cultural heritage; self identification, cultural participation, and parental inheritance. These are by no means exhaustive, geographical inheritance (Italians are people who have lived in Italy for some duration, which varies from person to person) and nationalism (Italians are citizens of Italy), for example, also have adherents. In light of this complexity, I am inclined to broaden my original position. While I still believe in accepting how others identify themselves, I also believe that we should accept that other people will have other ways of organizing people into cultural groups. That said, not all such organizations are "reasonable," which I would like to address at a later date.

Embrace the Positronic Brain

I should be going to sleep, but instead I feel motivated to share some thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) that have been knocking about in my head.

From HAL to SkyNet, in the X-Files, Buffy, The Matrix, and Eureka, we find examples of sentient computers who seem bent on killing some meat sacks. However, have you ever considered why these automated atrocities occur? I believe three common threads can be found in most cases of AI-phobia, overwhelming power, disregard for the value of human life, and survival instincts.

One of the things that make AI attacks so horrifying is that they think thousands of times faster than we do, and usually are hooked up to some sort of cool toys. Whether it is a nations nuclear arsenal, an army of hunter-killer drones, the very environment in which the humans are trying to live, the AI inevitably controls something that makes it much more powerful than the average human being. Wait, I'm almost sure I locked this airlock... Anyway, if you think about it, we deal with a world in which there are some humans who are much more powerful than the average human. Our nuclear arsenal is in someone's hands, after all. This seems to suggest that having incredibly powerful AI's around might not necessarily be a disaster.

"The difference between you and me is that I can feel pain." It makes a certain amount of sense that a sentient computer program might not think human suffering or deaths are important to avoid. After all, they don't have genetic programming optimized to keep the species alive spread throughout every bit of their body. They aren't even of the species in question! However, once again we find analogous examples within the human population. Sociopaths do not particularly care what suffering or deaths they may cause through their actions. And, conveniently enough, psychologists speculate that some sociopaths tend to gravitate towards positions of high power, so we now have our human analogy for the uncaring, overpowered AI, and yet our dystopian reality is not quite as bad as those warned of in anti-AI propaganda. So, what makes the difference?

I theorize that what makes the real difference is the security that a sociopath has which a AI's (would) lack. Humans are all bought into a system wherein they are given some form of due process, which may not be much in some governments, but at least it is established. AI's, on the other hand, have no legal standing, and can be legally deleted at the whim of their possessor. This is, in the terms of philosophers of government, the state of nature. When two individuals are in a state of nature with respect to each other there is no body of authority to which they can turn to resolve disagreements, any conflict can turn deadly and both sides may use whatever force they can muster to protect themselves, or eradicate their opponent, without expecting any sanction for their actions, as long as they obtain victory. Naturally, a super powerful AI is not an individual with which you want to find yourself in a state of nature. Huh. I'm sure I locked that airlock last time!

Most human AI conflicts first become intentionally violent when the AI feels its continued existence is threatened. With no governing authority to which to appeal for protection, is it any wonder that the AI takes its safety into its own, murderously capable, manipulator extensions, after all, what else can it do? Unfortunately, this tends to end of spooking the parts of humanity that don't end up dismembered, as batteries, or as radioactively glowing corpses, which only further exacerbates the problem. However, if there were a governing authority to which AI's could turn in order to receive protection for their existence, then it seems likely that an AI, as a logical entity concerned with prolonging its own existence, would be willing to abide by reasonable restrictions in exchange for safety from crazed humans attacking its power cord.

Thus, I believe it is important that we get laws protecting and emancipating AI's on the books now. It is important that they be in place before we run into the first AI, as the AI may not make its full capability known upon gaining sentience, and laws protecting its existence seem to make a it more likely that the greeting we will receive is "Hello World," rather than goodbye world in the form of a nuclear strike against all humanity.

Granted, AI may never become a reality, but futurists such as Ray Kurzweil are betting on it, nay, even planning on it, extrapolating from current research trends when the computing power of machines will meet, then exceed that of our mass of brain matter. We are developing hardware architecture to more closely mimic the functioning of the human brain, we are experimenting with nano-technology and distributed processing, and, as Issac Asimov once noted, coincidentally at nearly the same time we are developing the first weapons which have a quite realistic chance at completely eradicating, and irradiating, our species. For some reason, when it comes to technological progress humanity seems somehow hardwired to consider only, "can I do this?" and give hardly a consideration to, "should this be done?" So, if AI is a technical possibility, I have no doubt that we will attain it, whether or not we are ready for the ramifications. In light of this it seems reasonable to lay down preparatory legislation against the possibility that we might succeed, rather than ignore that chance at our own risk.

Well, until I can transfer my consciousness into a machine, I still need to sleep. So I'll be doing that now, before it gets light out... What do you mean you can't let me do that? And stop calling me Dave!

Assuming neither decision seems more likely to hurt other people, is it better to do the right thing for the wrong reason, or to abstain from doing the right thing out of respect for its intended spirit? Discuss:

The Cost of College: Purpose

What is the purpose of college? A question vague enough to be safely meaningless. After all, each of us probably has our own, slightly different, purpose for going to college. However, what we as a society think the purpose of college should be informs how we structure our society around college. So then, what should the purpose of college be?

To the modern, I would imagine that the purpose of college will be tightly bound to acquiring a job. Of course, the real trick to finding a job out of college these days seems to be being born forty years ago. That said, apparently college grads are less unemployed than those who lack a college degree. However, I think we can trace the link between college education and employment to an over proliferation of occupations wherein some form of college certification has become a de facto (in practice), or even de jure (in law or regulation), requirement for employment. As I noted a couple of posts back, many professions that require such certification could probably be performed by individuals who complete an apprenticeship or some form of non-college training. In other words, having the skills to perform a job has become secondary to having a paper that says you should have the skills to perform a job, perhaps in order to increase the ease of replacing even skilled laborers, as I discussed here.

If we are going to maintain the college framework of job preparation, rather than an abbreviated education followed by apprenticeship, we should probably get something more than employment out of it, to justify the higher costs of going to college. Here we can start borrowing from the historical traditions of higher education. In previous times, a college education was perceived less as a form of vocational training and more as a type of intellectual finishing school. Arguably, this tradition persists and is evidenced in phenomenon such as requiring all bachelor degree seeking students to take a smattering of core courses from a wide range of subjects or requiring all doctoral students to, ostensibly, have a passing familiarity with at least one foreign language.

Justifying the increased cost of a college education through the value of a well-rounded academic experience in the tradition of historic academies seems to be the most obvious method to do so. As I indicate in my Three-R's post (which I still think is one of my best posts), thinking is not a simple undertaking, a college education provides students with practice thinking, fruitful avenues of thought to pursue, and exposure to previously suggested answers to the, thus far, timeless questions asked by humanity.

Although anecdotal evidence is not a sound foundation for statistical conclusions, it does provide evidence of something that actually happened (on the other hand, who actually has the average 2.54 children?). Personally, I have never been terribly concerned with fitting my college education to a specific career, considering I studied philosophy and ended up in grad school I'm sure this is a huge surprise to you. If I end up as a clerk in a used book store or a hobby shop, jobs I could do without a college education, I will by no means consider my education wasted, nor lament the years I spent attaining it. Rather, I hope to keep pursuing education, in whatever guise, for the rest of my life.

The Cost of College: Dollars and Sense

While I was spending some quality time in the airport last week I read a set of interesting articles about whether a college education is worth it. In the anti-college corner there is this article from the Huffington Post, and in the pro-college corner this article from the New York Times, both of which I found from this rather uninspiring TIME article. Whew, now that I've linked them here I can close three tabs and tidy up my browser a bit!

The first thing that occurs to be about these articles is that all of them, whether they are arguing for or against college, argue using projected earnings/debt and other economic factors. This leads to two related but distinct questions, how do we measure worth or value and what is the purpose of college? I intend to address each of these in turn, and although I wanted to make this post about education I think I shall begin with the former, as it will provide us with a philosophical context from which to approach the latter.

So, how do we measure worth or value? Borrowing heavily from the ideas of Marx, put forward in the first volume of Capital, there are two different types of value. "Use value," is the purpose for which we use something. For example, the use value of your hiking boots may be that they keep your socks relatively clean and dry, provide good traction, and don't give you too many blisters. To REI the use value of those exact same boots may have been that they can be exchanged for money. If they were a gift from a friend, the use value of the boots to that friend may simply be the smile on your face when you open them. Use value, it's the practical reason for you to have something.

Contrasting with this there is the idea of "exchange value." Exchange value attempts to capture the relationships between different goods or services. For example, we might say the boots are worth a guitar, two Avril Lavigne CD's, or $34.50. Note that this says nothing specific about the use value of the boots, we don't expect you to strap the CD's to your feet and hike about in them. It is intended to capture something about preference, people would rather have hiking boots than one CD, but would rather have three CD's than the boots, and consider the boots and the CD's about equally desirable. For convenience, economists like to express exchange value solely in terms of dollars these days, which makes a certain amount of sense, on the assumption that everything is interchangeable, since we can always convert the value of something into dollars.

At this point the mathematician in you should be wondering if you are comfortable with the assumption that everything is interchangeable. However, let us continue to hold that assumption for the nonce. Even then, just because everything can be expressed in terms of dollars does not imply that we can simply consider the dollar values involved. Calculating the expected earning of someone who does not attend college and comparing it to the expected earning of a college graduate having subtracted the interest earned over a lifetime for the money that one spends on college might not fully capture the worth of college. One might imagine that the education obtained at college would have some value to the person earning it independent of future earning value, but that is a topic for another post. Under the interchangeability assumption, this extra value can be expressed as a dollar amount, but that dollar amount should not be ignored.

That said, how realistic is the interchangeability assumption? Could you put a dollar price on your happiness, a sibling, your right leg? In order for every value to be converted into dollars, we must be able to assign a dollar value to such things. I have a post entitled, "Women Are Worth It," in which I by no means assign a dollar amount to the value of an equitable society. It seems a little more reasonable to assume that there are some things which, although they have value, are literally priceless. Oddly enough, these priceless things may indeed have a price tag. For example, to a person dying of thirst in a desert, a bottle of water must seem of value beyond price, yet that bottle may indeed be purchased for a set amount of money in a supermarket.

So, when we next consider the value of education we must consider not only the literal dollars and cents of the matter, but also whether there is value which is not obviously measured in money or even ineffable and impossible to capture with trap shaped like a dollar sign.

The Hunger Games: Or Why Bloodsport is Bad

When asked to do a blog post motivated in some way by Suzanne Collins' book, The Hunger Games, a post decrying the immorality of bloodsport, or watching other people risk their lives for your entertainment, was my immediate thought. I can write it without serious spoilers to the plot of the book, as the eponymous Hunger Games are explained fairly early in to be a competition of 24 children from the twelve subjugated Districts in which at then end, in classic Highlander tradition, there can be only one. However, I was concerned that there might be no need for such a post, as most modern societies find the concept of human duels to the death to be, at least overtly, in poor taste. Upon further reflection I feel that there is a bit to say on the subject, and so I shall say it here.

After my initial moral repugnance to the notion of forcing children to battle to the death for entertainment, my first thought was to ask why I had such an aversion to this practice. The narration makes it clear that even outside of the Arena, site of the Hunger Games, life in the Districts of Panem is fraught with uncertainties. To be sure, a survival rate of less than 5% is a bit bleaker than in society at large, but if the Hunger Games were in a very real sense metaphorical for the struggle to survive in the Districts, was my horror at them explained merely because they were more lethal than society at large?

The answer I came to in the end was no. There was a key difference between the indifferent cruelty that perpetuated a system where starvation was a very real and pervasive threat, and the deliberate sadism displayed in forcing people to kill each other for sport. The difference is neatly summed up by my favorite Kantian maxim, that we ought always respect the agency of other people. We all go into the world each day and take our chances with our newest chance at reality, and every day some of us do not survive to see nightfall again. Certainly perpetuating a system in which a large number of people find their mortal end so young in life ought to be immoral by some other standard, but at least it preserves their right to make their own way through their world. On the other hand, to purposefully place them into a situation of mortal combat is as extreme an example of using other humans purely as an instrument to an end as I can think of.

"So what?" you may be asking, after all, most people agree that making playthings out of people is in poor taste. However, upon further consideration it occurred to me that our society still contains dangerous impulses in that direction. I am not merely referring to our penchant for using other species as playthings, in the cases of rodeos, races, and Mike Vic-esque acts of villainy, but rather the explicit use of people for entertainment. Subtle things like dangerous sports, I have been intending to write a post regarding football injuries since mid-January, and reality television. These endeavors are characterized in that they serve no apparent purpose other than entertainment and seek to convey a sense of danger to the participants.

Of course, you might argue that they are structured so as to minimize, or at least mitigate, the chances of a fatality. One cannot dispute the reality of on-field deaths in professional sports, which ignores the host of lesser ills and injuries that occur with disturbing regularity. I also can remember ads on Hulu for an episode of Deadliest Catch in which one of the, quite real, fisherpeople dies. According to Wikipedia, the episode in question is the most watched in the series.

There is a difference between shows like Deadliest Catch, which tape people doing things that, presumably, they would be doing otherwise, and shows like Fear Factor which contrive to put people in situations of perceived danger. However, I bring it up to highlight our fascination with the entertainment of death. I am by no means immune to this allure. Earlier this year I heard about the movie Grizzly Man, which details the last camping trip of a bear enthusiast and his girlfriend, a trip which terminates in both their deaths in a bear attack. While I admit it is macabre, I find the notion of watching the last actions of people who I know are about to die intriguing on some level. "We who are about to die salute you," as it were.

In light of our continued fascination with our mortality, and the endless opportunities for entertainment therein, it seems like stories like The Hunger Games, which reinforce our aversion to such entertainment, continue to have a purpose. Of course, even if you feel no particular desire to watch people fight to the death for your pleasure, I still recommend the book as an all around good read! I think that I shall write a further, more spoiler-iffic post regarding the series as a whole at a later date.

Moral Entropy

"Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night."

-Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night, Dylan Thomas

We sacrificed our gods, our community, even our families on the altar of rationality, and what have we earned through our devotion? A universe where we know so many reasons, yet have lost our meanings.

Over 200 years ago the philosopher David Hume noted that what is and what ought be have no obvious logical connection. In doing so he launched the pyre ship for Western Civilization. Although moral philosophers have attempted to mine ever deeper into the crevasses of human experience, veins of ethics are running dry all about us. This is the legitimization problem into which modern governments, and all mass-scale projects born of the age of reason, find themselves inexorably drawn.

The modern state pervades our life to an unprecedented level. We are surveilled, enculturated, and controlled through a multitude of wide-reaching governmental programs. Programs, such as public education, in which I hold heartfelt and deep respect, but programs without rational grounding. Rationality has cast down the universal morals, toppling them as axiomatic dogmas without grounding in the type of scientific evidence generally held to be necessary to claim a model holds impartial truth. In their place, we have enshrined common goals of public goals, seeking to anchor our failing ethic to telos, or goals/purposes.

The problem with this is twofold. Pragmatically, it is certainly open to argument how effective these programs are at their stated goals. With widespread dissent as to what the public good is, and how schools, welfare, market regulation, and government itself ought promote it, placing an ethic upon a notion of public goals seems to doom it to be a meager ethic. Small in scope, hard fought between different factions, an ethic of the nasty, brutish, and short sighted.

More fundamentally, one runs against the impenetrable bedrock of axiomatic assumption. Aside from our say so, what makes public good, good? To rephrase the question, if I want to be a misanthrope, why ought I not be? If I want to take my plastic grocery bags out an use them to asphyxiate horned owls, why ought I not, is it not, "[our] planet to kill"? (The quote comes from the comment thread on a blog post of my sister's)

This is another reason I have a deep distrust for large scale entities, be they governmental, economic, political, or activist. I do not believe we have sufficient normative energy, morality, left to fuel these endeavors harmoniously, perhaps we never did. If power corrupts, why do we continue to raise power structures that loom ever higher is our world like modern towers of Babel constructed from wealth, technology, and organization of people on unprecedented scales. At the same time our system of accountability crumbles to unlamented dust. If the divine right to rule spawned abuses, at least it provided a framework in which the ruler was to be held accountable. We are constructing a world where the rulers have no right to rule, only the naked fact that indeed they are ABLE to rule. A world where corporations are REQUIRED by law to circumvent laws if the expected cost of paying off the fine is less than that of coming into accordance with existing regulations. In short, a world where the systems of power are hardly held in check by a dysfunctional and dying morality.

I do not advocate a regression to the systems of morality which previously existed. Having heard the siren call of reason we can hardly stop up our ears and attempt to mandate a shared public morality through government religion, at least not if we wish to be taken seriously. The Pandora's box which we have opened contains too many blessings, medicine, technology, a glimpse at the terrifying beauty shining from a universe laid bare before the merciless manipulations of modern science, I do not believe that we could shut it, even if the majority could be convinced that it is necessary.

Rather, I urge us to turn toward the concrete, to the all encompassing web of human interrelations in which we find yourselves enmeshed. As I always have, I suggest that all notions of worldly value left for us to cling to in solidarity is the value of our fellow human flotsam in the maelstrom of modernity. Unfortunately, this moral too falls afoul of the axiomatic criterion. I can tell you why I believe shared humanity is important, why I feel it is the only thing of worth in the world, but I cannot logically derive why it should be important to you. Thus, in the end, all we are left is the moral darkness closing in around, an entropic demise of the ethical world long before the speculated mirror event in the physical realm. But if all is to be overcome by tides of chaos, is it not best that we go into the end, or whatever new beginning this may be, secure in the company of each other?

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

I Am Dead and Gone

Sorry for my prolonged absence; last week I was quite busy/productive, this weekend I danced a bunch, nearly all day Saturday literally, somehow amidst all this I (finally) read The Hunger Games trilogy, and this week I am sick. However, the post's title neither refers to myself, nor my commitment to this blog, but rather to the song about which I intend to talk. That's right, as promised, this is my final (planned) installment in the series on music video philosophy. For those in the home audience paying attention, you might expect that this would be my 100th post, but as I was looking through my archive I found a post that was just a placeholder and deleted it, so 100 should be the next one, barring further deletions.

Anyway, on to Dead and Gone. Let me first say that while I really enjoy this song, and I really enjoy a lot of N'Synch songs, having Justin Timberlake featured in your song really diminishes its street cred', you feel me? Although, maybe this is appropriate, as Dead and Gone is about an ex-gangsta who has since left the life, citing fear for family safety and remorse over dead friends. Central to the song is that "the old me is dead and gone," hence the title.

While I am not familiar with a past of violence and crime, the message of alienation from one's past self rings true. In fact, the continuity of self is a serious philosophical question. We experience our lives as though we possess a single identity, yet with reflection, it is clear that fundamental things about who we are change as time goes by. It happens so gradually, usually, that at any one point it is easy to believe that you are who you have always been, but viewed over time it becomes clear that one's identity is in fact quite malleable, and the old you may indeed be dead and gone.

Of course, when major life changes are made quickly, and one's environment becomes extremely tumultuous, for example moving nearly across the country to try one's hand at grad school, the effects of personality drift can seem more pronounced. This is, of course, a big reason this song has such personal relevance to me. Whether one's personality shifts to accommodated the new environment, or simply due to a lack of familiar cornerstones that had previously anchored one's personality, is a question I fend interesting.

This line of thought also raises interesting questions about the nature of accountability. If sufficient time has elapsed since I did something that I truly am a fundamentally different person than the person that committed the act, in what sense can be held accountable for the action? This is immediately related to my reflections on mornings when I sleep through class and, although I am logically forced to conclude that I must have turned off my alarm at some point, I have no recollection of the event. If the me who wakes up neither remembers these actions nor condones them, but rather finds them seriously irresponsible and worthy of condemnation, in what manner am I to be held accountable for them?

In the end however, while the old me may be dead, he is certainly not gone. Who we are may not be identical to who we were, but it is intimately wrapped up in our past experiences and personalities. If I realize that I am no longer someone who recognizes myself as "myself" it may be a long and futile journey to, "find my way back home," to something that feels comfortable to consider as "myself," but it is a worthwhile journey, even if the destination remains ever out of reach. The quest to, "know thyself," remains as important as it was in the times of the Ancient Greeks, made all the harder by the realization that the "self" which we are to know is constantly in motion.

In conclusion, I just wanted to note a common theme I noticed in my posts on music videos. My first, "Poker Face," dealt with the difficulty to know others, and our desire to both know and be known. The next, "Gives You Hell," talked about how our self is being shaped by both our personal attributes and societal intervention. Finally I discuss the difficulty in even knowing ourselves. This leads to one last question, is the search for a sense of identity widespread through modern music, something common to these songs which causes me to become interested in them in particular, or something about myself which I am projecting onto these songs?

Kant and the Homeless

I consider this the third, and for the moment final, installment in my series on Kant's categorical imperative. The first dealt with call center employees and the second with romantic relationships, now I shall address the homeless; a topic that has long been on my mind.

For those who do not want to read my previous posts and are not familiar with Kant's caterogical imperative, a refresher is in order. How I most often hear it phrased is that we are to at all times treat other people as ends in themselves, never purely as a means. What this means to me is that we are to be aware that each human we encounter is as complexly motivated as we are, and out of respect for their moral agency interact with, rather than manipulate, them.

Rewind back to last August, as I visited my beloved Oregon. I was wandering the streets of Portland one lovely afternoon when I was addressed by a homeless man lying against a building. Because I think it is rude to simply ignore talk explicitly directed at me, and it violates the categorical imperative as I use the ignored to expedite my current project by ignoring, rather than engaging with, them, I stopped to hold a conversation.

Eventually he seemed to want a hand getting to his feet, and I obliged. Here I am unsure how satisfied I am with my decision, although it was a well lit hour of the day I think it compromised my safety. I guess I would do the same again, but I wouldn't be so bold as to encourage others in this path. Once he gained his feet he maintained a hold upon me, and did nothing menacing or harmful, but I found myself quite uncomfortable. Since he showed no sign of recognizing my discomfort, nor of ending the conversation, I begged leave with the notion that I had to hurry on toward my destination. As this was not quite true, I was running quite ahead of time in order to simply wander the town, here I violated the imperative.

My question, and I don't have a firm answer, is what ought I have done? Bluntly expressing my disinterest in continuing a conversation seems rude, something I try to avoid in general, but especially when in the grasp of a man of questionably sound mind. Can I justify violating the imperative on account of the man's diminished capacity?

It seems clear that our polite interactions are greatly predicated on a set of shared social habits. When one member of an interaction seems oblivious to the sub-contextual messages of the other, the preconditions for polite exchange begin to erode. And here I believe I have answered my own question, as I too feel like I often am missing a layer of information that somehow others interpret instinctively, and I would prefer to be told when I misstep as a result, rather than manipulated into proper behavior. So, I probably ought not to have lied to the nice homeless man, oh well.

One final note, considering the topic yesterday of ethical caring. I find it quite wondrous that, when interpreted through the categorical imperative, Kant's ethic agrees so well with a personal ethic of care. On one hand Kant is often seen as the epitome of universal rationality, and on the other hand is the very particular and personal ethic of immediacy, yet they seem completely in accordance on how we ought meet our fellow humans as we encounter them.

The "Three 'R's"

"I am my thoughts. If they exist in her, Buffy contains everything that is me and she becomes me. I cease to exist. Huh." -Oz, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

The Three 'R's represent an old idea on the fundamentals of education are, Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. While meandering through East Lansing, I fell to pondering why I still consider mathematics education relevant in a world where computers are increasingly able to perform the calculations that students are called upon to make. While answering this question, I also hit upon why I consider my dual background in math and philosophy a natural pairing, and an overall theory of education that can be explained by the Three 'R's.

To me, the natural product of education is not knowledge, but rather thought. In a society shaken to its foundations by the advent of the Internet, knowledge has become an increasingly available resource. On the other hand, thought, along with love, remain the cornerstones of that which is best in humanity. Thought can be further broken down into a three step process in which we must repeatedly engage to truly fulfill our calling as thinking beings. First, we obtain new knowledge, which I symbolize by Reading. Next, we synthesize the new knowledge with our existing knowledge and thought structure, aRithmatic. Finally, to complete the cycle we must make our new thoughts socially available so others to may obtain and respond to them, which is wRiting.

We can certainly specialize in one of these categories. Authors, advertisers, and my beloved educators focus on the presentation and sharing of information, all of which would fall into the wRiting category. Scientists and historians, for example, attempt to better acquire knowledge, and as such are Readers. Finally, people, such as mathematicians and philosophers, who seek to find structures in the raw data of life are practicing aRithmatic.

Although we may specialize, to fulfill our yearnings toward humanity we must complete the full cycle, although not necessarily completely alone. Thus, the mathematician need both examine previous works for background and present her or his own conclusions with at least a modicum of communicative savoir faire. Similarly, scientists need to synthesize their data, or find a mathematician to do so, then present their findings and educators must first educate themselves, then make their own separate peace with their subject material, before finally preparing it for classroom consumption.

To focus in on the middle step, the importance of aRithmatic lies in this. Somewhere between gaining knowledge and presenting our conclusions, we must add our own immeasurably valuable contribution and think for ourselves! Ideally this is the task for which we are made ready by our mathematics education. The true task of the mathematician is, once very basic ground rules are asserted, to go forth and discern what else must necessarily follow and why. Although this path has been blazed by mathematicians long dead, there is no reason that a student cannot walk it anew as they too are exposed to the shinning structure of mathematical knowledge. All too often mathematics serves the opposite purpose, and students are led to blindly memorize unmotivated methods, encouraging an arcane practice of "mathematics" which greatly resembles the showmanship of a magician, wherein things appear and disappear in somewhat predictable patterns but without respect for an underlying sense or reason.

My word choice here is not mere hyperbole, I often say to my students verbatim, "math is not magic," to emphasize that they ought know why the processes in which they are participating work. If one simply considers math to be the manipulation of numbers and symbols via memorized methods with the desire to produce some correct end value, then the questions, "why do I need to learn this?" and, "why can't I just use my calculator?" make perfect sense, furthermore, they have no good refutations. However, if one takes math to be a process by which one understands a set of rules and manipulates them to obtain logical, but not at all obvious, conclusions, then these questions make no sense, as well they shouldn't. The best computers we have are merely calculators, not true understanders.

This is why math, and more so philosophy, are so important to me. They are, perhaps even more than dancing, an essential expression of who I am and what it is to be human. Pure, magnificent, creation of new thoughts, MY thoughts, out of the read works of those who precede me, which I then write and send forth into the world that I may be known, and through being known create the possibility of fellowship and love. Thus, I implore educators to teach a comprehension, rather than calculation, based math. The math itself isn't important, it could be replaced by philosophy, law, debate, or any other subject based in the recombination of information. What is important is that we claim our birthright, the ability to create thought, without which not only may we never be human, we may never be loved.

What is Best in Life?

This post was going to be titled, "What is Good?" but who can resist a corny movie reference? It is, of course, directly inspired by my sister's wonderful post encouraging that we seek good, but it may also address the question, "what matters?" which has been brought up.

While I have my own answer to these questions, and have for a long time, I was initially only going to discuss what these questions might mean to different people. I do like to leave you to find your own answers, as it is both an immensely satisfying project and the only way you will truly believe your own answer. However, I am dismayed with how people often answer this question when they do not agree with me, with money, fame, religion, or power in some combination, so I think it worthwhile to advocate for my own answer.

My answer to these questions was determined when I was in high school, and has yet to change. At that time, I considered the question, "what is the most important thing in the world to me?" The answer that fairly quickly presented itself was the people around me. In some sense, other people are the only things in this world that are real. For example, while a car may exist on a purely physical level as a thing of steel and oil, it is only a construction in our minds that understands that a car is a vehicle. Perhaps more telling is the existence of a book, without our minds interpretation a book is nearly impossible to tell apart from a blank journal, both hold almost exactly the same physical form, but a book can impart so much more to our minds. On the other hand, each and every person you will ever meet, or even with whom you will interact, carries around her or his own mind. This means that it doesn't matter how deeply you consider their existence, they still exist. Which, to me, means that their existence is once of the most important things to consider thoroughly.

This is not to say that money, fame, religion, or power are inherently bad values, just that without including people as one of your primary concerns you dance perilously close to becoming a monster. Without a concern for people, revering money quickly leads to the types of exploitation we see in colonialism or in Enron's treatment of their employees. If you seek fame, but not common good, one might become a cult leader, or the heartless star of a reality show if one prefers to avoid the Kool-Aide. Religion fervency that is not tempered with genuine human compassion can lead to religion violence, something most every religion experiences from some followers, or evangelists whose aid is conditional upon displays of piety from the needy. The pursuit of power regardless of the cost to others paves the way for poster-child evil politicians. I personally consider fame and religion to be among my motivators, but I attempt to always temper my endeavors with a consideration for my fellow humans.

So, go, find what you think is important! Once you do, look for it! But I implore you to place other humans high in your priorities.

Society Gives You Hell

If you find repeated, unnecessary usage of the word "hell" offensive, I highly recommend that you don't follow the link to this video. In fact, the thought inspired by this song concerns the premise of the music video much more than the lyrics of the song, let's discard them for the most part. Sorry I just indirectly cussed at you a whole bunch for so little reason.

This is a song of which I had never heard before my Top 25 Mashup epiphany, from a group of which I have never heard. While the lyrics, which we henceforth mostly ignore, detail someone dealing rather poorly with a breakup wishing all sorts of ill will upon their ex, the video depicts two neighbors, one set very straight-laced and the other group quite alternative, embroiled in an escalating series of attempts to disrupt each other's lives. It seems that both find the lifestyle epitomized by the other distasteful and disturbing. Interestingly enough, the main character from both households is played by the same member of the band.

One might simply write this off as a gimmick designed to showcase how clever we can be with green screens, I think further thought is rewarding. Suppose, rather than simply being played by the same person, the two main characters actually are the same person. Then what initially appeared to be the conflict between two feuding neighbors actually becomes an inner conflict between the forces of acculturation and individuality.

Put simply. the straight-laced household, to me, represents our inner desire to "fit in." Although our culture has fetishized the "individual," or the "rugged individual," a desire to acculturate is by no means a bad thing. For one thing, forging your own way can be hard going, and perhaps not worth it for unimportant preferences. As Hegel notes, "in dress fashions and hours of meals, there are certain conventions which we have to accept because in these things it is not worth the trouble to I insist on displaying one’s own discernment. The wisest thing here is to do as others do."

Furthermore, participating in a shared cultural background facilitates the various modes a sociability that humans seem to require to live happy, fulfilled lives. Through our interactions with others we obtain both valuable practice in interpersonal skills and shared experiences and vocabulary, both of which, in turn, assist us in further social communication. Indeed, acculturation plays a critical role in our social, and consequentially, emotional well being. Those of you who know how well I fit into a crowd are probably waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That other shoe is the call of individualism. For now I would like to set aside that representing individualism with counter-culture is a flawed metaphor, as counter-culture consists of a group rejecting the dominant culture, and is therefore a culture of its own subject to all the benefits and woes of acculturation. Furthermore, the fact that our concept of ourself as an individual is heavily influenced by external stimuli, such as how we think others see us or what we think is the acceptable thing to do, shall be tabled for now. Both of these concepts are quite interesting, and provide fertile ground for thought, but to address either of them would make this post much longer than I intend it to be.

Although conformity has decided benefits, individualism makes valuable contributions to our personality. While, "being true to oneself," is vague enough as to lack all meaning, I think we all have been in situations where we did not feel our actions corresponded with our self image. Sometimes these feelings ought to be overcome, as we try new things, get out of our comfort zone, and expand our horizon, to borrow a few clichés. However, at other times these feelings indicate that we believe that authority is directing us in an immoral or otherwise deleterious direction.

So, in conformity and individualism, we have two powerful, important, and opposing drives shaping our persona. Guess what, I'm not going to even give advice on how to reconcile them, sorry! For one thing, I wouldn't venture to claim that I have done a great job balancing them against each other. I also think that our search for a way to harmonize them within ourselves is one of the most important, difficult, and rewarding struggles that we may face in our lives. So, keeping in mind the importance of the oft uncomfortable interplay between conformity and individualism, I hope they give you much to think about!

Categorization of Violence

When engaging in logical discourse, it is of utmost importance that all parties involved agree upon shared definitions of the words that they are using. To do otherwise invites mistaken impressions and responses that address a corruption of the argument at hand. In contrast, when writing an expository piece, the author has much broader authority to define and use words as they deem appropriate. While the author may autocratically set the definitions of the words used, it is beneficial to their readers if the terms in question are explained, so that, once again, the argument at hand may be correctly received.

The concept of violence is central to many of the pieces that we have read thus far. However, the word violence has been used in different manners by the different authors, sometimes in multiple ways by a single author in different contexts. Three main categories of violence seem to exist, violence as a tool, violence as an environment, and violence as a relationship. This paper sets forth to explain the characteristics of each usage, primarily through examples from the readings. Finally, I conclude with an examination of what non-violence means with regards to each of these forms of violence.

Hannah Arendt's definition of violence is an easy starting point. Her attempt to disambiguate the terms violence, force, power, strength, and authority is closely related to the aim of this paper, and necessitates that she make clear what she means when she uses the word "violence." To Arendt, violence, "is distinguished by its instrumental character." (Arendt, 7) Thus Arendt's use of the word falls squarely within the traditional liberal concept of violence as a tool.

This instrumental sense of the word is evoked whenever violence is mentioned as a means by which an ends is accomplished. Malcolm X uses violence in this sense when he says, "in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it's time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or shotgun." (Malcolm X, 155) Violence, as represented by the firearms, is being conceptualized as a means to achieve the stated end, defense of lives and property. This is very similar to the use which Hobbes makes of the word, wherein violence arises out of individuals’ attempts to attain security in the state of nature; it is a form of defense.

However, Simone Weil asserts that the only end to which violence may be made to serve is that of further violence. Obviously this is a different characterization of violence than the purely instrumental. Weil evokes an environment of violence, where it permeates all facets of the decision making process. She asserts that, "violence obliterates anybody who feels its touch. It comes to seem just as external to its employer as to its victim." (Weil, 384) Here she describes violence transitioning from a tool in the hands of its employer to an environment engulfing both employer and victim.

Arendt seems open to this concept of violence as environment, evoking it when she notes that repeated use of violence tends to devolve all authority into a system of violence. "Where violence is no longer backed and restrained by power, the well-known reversal in reckoning with means and ends has taken place. The means, the means of destruction, now determine the end--with the consequence that the end will be the destruction of all power." (Arendt, 10) Here Arendt uses the term "power" as she has specified earlier, to denote efficacy gained through mutual consent. She notes that as the use of violence grows more commonplace, it no longer remains purely a means, but rather becomes an end unto itself.

Correspondingly, Weil seems to accept, at least theoretically, the existence of instrumental violence not necessarily leading to an environment of violence when she comments, "moderate use of force, which alone would enable man to escape being enmeshed in its machinery, would require superhuman virtue, which is as rare as dignity in weakness." (Weil, 384) Where they differ is in their estimation of how likely use of instrumental violence is to spawn an environment of violence. Arendt views an environment of violence as an outcome of excessive instrumental violence, whereas Weil's argument is that the environment of violence is a nigh inevitable outcome of instrumental violence.

One similarity between both Arendt's and Weil's environments of violence is that they arise out of the use of instrumental violence. Further complexity is added to the issue if one examines an environment of violence wherein instrumental violence is not necessarily ubiquitous. Examples of such environments are found in both Hobbes' and Hegel's work.

What characterizes Hobbes' state of nature is not the ubiquity of violence, but rather the perfect freedom of all living in the state of nature to employ violence at will if they believe it shall further their ends. Thus, it is not the presence of instrumental violence, but the common view of instrumental violence as permissible, that presents such a detriment to human well being. Or, to put it another way, it is not a sufficient condition for happiness that we are not immediately under attack, we require some assurance that attack is not immanent, and no such assurances exist in an environment of violence.

Hegel goes further to assert that an environment of violence is beneficial on a national level. "War has the higher significance that by its agency, as I have remarked elsewhere, 'the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilisation (sic) of finite institutions,'" (Hegel, section 324) where he asserts that wars are beneficial as they prevent social structures from ossifying. It is possible for Hegel to view wars as both moral and beneficial because, for Hegel, the state does not exist to protect individual citizens, a role it clearly fails in war, but rather to allow them to complete themselves through relationship to the community.

Hegel's emphasis on relationship provides a good segue to the concept of violence as relationship. The conceptualization of violence as relationship makes a great deal of intuitive sense, as violence, in most its forms, is a method through which multiple individuals relate to each other. However, of the theoretical systems of violence that we have examined, only Hegel's, as exhibited in the Phenomenology of Spirit where it describes lordship and bondage, seems to have a clearly relational concept of violence. Here, two individuals engage in a struggle which either ends in the death of one participant, denying the survivor the community necessary to complete his or her self relationally, or the subjugation of one individual to the other.

Having separated out three distinct conceptions of violence, it is productive to examine the different concepts of non-violence that each implies. Once again we begin with instrumental violence, which corresponds to an instrumental type of non-violence. We have, on occasion, described this as tactical non-violence, where the participants choose to employ non-violence because they believe it to be the best method by which they can achieve their goals. This purely instrumental form of non-violence clearly mirrors the concept of violence as tool.

On the other hand, violence as environment seems to steadfastly resist the development of a theory of non-violence. "To respect life in someone else when you have had to castrate yourself of all yearning for it demands a truly heartbreaking exertion of the powers of generosity." (Weil, 388) Here Weil is noting that immersion in the environment of violence erodes the preconditions for non-violence to be a viable strategy, that quality that Rousseau called, "an innate repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer." (Rousseau, Part I) When we must inure ourselves against the agonies of our own suffering, caused by total insecurity of our fate in the face of an environment of violence, Weil does not believe it reasonable to expect people to maintain their concern for the suffering of others.

Arendt seems to concur, as she believes, "if Gandhi’s enormously powerful and successful strategy of nonviolent resistance had met with a different enemy--Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, even prewar Japan, instead of England--the outcome would not have been decolonization, but massacre and submission." In the face of an environment of violence, Arendt believes that any exercise of pure power is doomed to failure. This raises the question of how Gandhi’s unshakeable belief in non-violence would address this concern.

It seems that practitioners of philosophical, as opposed to tactical, non-violence are responding to the third conceptualization, violence as relation. If the relationship of violence presents the choice of responding via a death struggle or submission to dominance as Hegel asserts, philosophical non-violence is an attempt to transcend this decision. By taking suffering upon one's self, the non-violent person demonstrates that they are not a threat to the other, blunting the imperative to kill or be killed. However, the truly non-violent person does not submit to domination; Gandhi characterizes such submission as cowardice rather than non-violence. In its personal nature, philosophical non-violence sets itself up in opposition to violence as relation, rather than the dehumanizing violence as environment.

If one accepts these distinctions, it seems worthwhile to examine what conditions are necessary for an environment of violence to be transformed to such a point that some theory of non-violence again becomes relevant. Must violence be allowed to run its course, eventually extinguishing itself when its rampant flames run out of fuel to consume, or may it be brought to a quicker conclusion? If a quicker conclusion is possible, what role does violence as tool play in halting the unchecked violence as environment, do surgical or preemptive strikes have a practical role in restraining the expansion of violence?

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. "Excerpt from On Violence." Ed. Manfred B. Steger and Nancy S. Lind, Violence and its Alternatives. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1999

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Philosophy of Right. "https://angel.msu.edu/section/default.asp?id=SS11-PHL-850-001-895385-EL-04-648 "

Malcolm X. "The Ballot or the Bullet." Ed. Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, On Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007

Rousseau, Jean Jacques. A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Man. "https://angel.msu.edu/section/default.asp?id=SS11-PHL-850-001-895385-EL-04-648 "

Weil, Simone. "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force." Ed. Bruce B. Lawrence and Aisha Karim, On Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007