THESIS XII
A Philosophical Review
Volume 17 • Number 1
December, 2009
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Stephen Kullas
Defining and Defending Altruism
Shelby Giaccarini
Organic Farming
Benjamin Hollows
Plato & Myth
Jacob A. Wheeler
Danto’s Slippers
Defining and Defending Altruism
Stephen Kullas
(Stephen enters)Joe: You are just flat out wrong!
Nick: Dismissing my arguments dogmatically now are we Joe?
Stephen: Whoa, Whoa! Take it easy! What is going on?
Joe: Nick opened his mouth and, as usual, let utter garbage fall from it.
Nick: Ad hominem attack; truly pathetic.
Stephen: Ok you two, just what are you arguing about?
Joe: Nick, ever the optimist, thinks that humans are altruists.
Nick: There you go putting words in my mouth, I said that we have the capacity for altruism, and that it may even be commonplace.
Joe: What it actually has come down to, is that we disagree with the definition of altruism, and so we cannot continue further.
Nick: Yes, Joe defines altruism as an act of good for the benefit of others, in which the actor gains no conscious benefit.
Joe: Whereas Nick thinks it is any act of self sacrifice for the benefit of others. We have simply reached an impasse.
Stephen: Well, I’m not entirely sure that is the case; let us quickly examine your definition Joe. You would surely agree that there can be few, if any cases in which the actor has no conscious benefit even from acts of charity?
Joe: I do, that is my exact claim.
Stephen: Well then, you have simply created a definition that you could easily defeat. It is as if I defined a ‘good person’ as someone who has never acted in a bad way; by this definition I can show that there are no good people, which you would surely agree is false. Your definition is designed to prove what you set out to prove.
Joe: Well, I think I see your point, but my definition’s inadequacies hardly makes Nick’s better.
Stephen: Actually, given a choice between the two, I would be inclined to choose Nick’s definition, with one amendment.
Nick: Oh?
Stephen: You define Altruism as self sacrifice for the benefit of others, but we must be careful to stipulate that the benefit to others must be the central focus, or impetus of the action.
Joe: You have painted yourself into a corner now, as we cannot know what a person’s central reason for action is!
Stephen: If you mean to know with absolute certainty, in the Cartesian sense, then you are correct. However, since we can know little with the certainty of Descartes’ cogito, we can infer, through an assessment of the benefits and the costs of an action, what the primary drive of the act is. If the benefits outweigh the costs, then a person is acting mainly out of self-regard. However, if the costs outweigh the benefits then little else but altruism could explain it.
Joe: Well, then the burden of proof is on you. Show me an example of this commonplace altruism.
Nick: The best example is parenthood. The very institution of parenthood, and by this I mean non-neglectful parenting, is altruistic. The many costs of child-rearing could not possibly be outweighed by the benefits, and any perceived long term investments of having children are risky ones at best.
Joe: Well it would seem that parenthood, under your definition, is indeed an institution in which altruism is commonplace.
Nick: Then it is settled.
Joe: Not so fast. I think your cost-benefit analyses may trick you into seeing altruism where there is none.
Nick: What do you mean?
Joe: Here’s an example. A family is going on an evening stroll, and the child’s tricycle rolls off the curb into traffic. The husband jumps into the street and rescues the child, ruining his shoes and trousers in the process. According to your cost-benefit analysis, this is altruism, but hold that thought a moment. Later that evening his wife thanks him and asks why he did it, and he admits that he would not have been able to live with himself if he hadn’t. Thus egoism inevitably reasserts itself. The positive benefits to the actor actually outweigh the cost
Nick: There is a fundamental flaw with that logic, in that it fails to explore the root of the potential guilt. The reason this man would feel guilty for not helping is because he is an altruist; otherwise he simply would not care. So if altruism were impossible then the guilt would not exist.
Stephen: We have certainly come a long way from the definitional impasse.
Joe: Two against one, it was hardly fair…
Stephen Kullas is a student at MCLA
~~~
Organic Farming
Shelby Giaccarini
Humans have a moral obligation to buy organic food, because organic farming is better for the environment. The environment is, at least, instrumentally valuable to humans. “Better for the environment” means better than conventionally grown food. Organic food, as defined by the USDA National Organic Program, is that which is grown “without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation.” Organic animals are not given antibiotics or growth hormones. (1)
Organic food is better for the environment because it does not contain pesticides or fertilizers. Pesticides poison the soil and water, and have been linked with the deaths of fish and birds. (2) Synthetic fertilizers that are used in conventional farming run off into rivers and can create dead zones, such as in the Gulf of Mexico, where there is now a dead zone larger than the state of New Jersey. (3)
Organic farming is also better for the environment because it does not use antibiotics. Non-organic feedlot animals are given antibiotics to prevent disease and infection. They are also used to control bacterial infections in non-organic fruits and vegetables. These antibiotics then spread into surface and ground water supplies. (4) According to Michael Pollan, “Most of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed, a practice that is leading directly to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.” (5)
The lack of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, also makes organic farming better for the environment. Herbicide-resistant crops and virus-resistant crops are the most popular genetic modifications to plants. If a crop is herbicide-resistant, farmers can spray it with chemicals and not harm the crop, while all of the surrounding plant life dies. This creates farms that are “devoid of wildlife and will spell disaster for millions of already declining birds and plants." (6) The use of GMOs eliminates diversity, which is a key component to a healthy environment, and “may gradually create dangerous, invasive species-type monocultures.” (7)
Buying organic foods supports organic agriculture. As more people support organic agriculture, conventional agriculture will dwindle. If fewer farmers grow food conventionally, less pesticides, fertilizers, GMOs, and antibiotics will be used, and the environment will be damaged less.
One may object to this thesis by questioning whether organic farming is enough better to outweigh the problems of doing it on a large scale. For example, in the words of Pollan, an “organic meal [that has been shipped long distances or heavily processed] is nearly as drenched in fossil fuel as its conventional counterpart…while it is true that organic farmers don’t spread fertilizers made from natural gas or spray pesticides made from petroleum, industrial organic farmers often wind up burning more diesel fuel than their conventional counterparts…” (8)
This objection is most likely correct. It seems, then, that perhaps buying organic food is only one piece of the puzzle. Buying local, small-scale, and in-season food may be at least as big of a factor as organic is. When we buy food from local farmers, we can find out what kind of fertilizers, pesticides, and other methods the farmer uses, all while eliminating a large portion of the fossil fuels used in transportation.
Notes
1. www.organic.org/education/faqs
2. www.pmac.net/bird_fish_CA.html
3. www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ summary/sci;285/5428/661d
4. www.tufts.edu/med/apua/Ecology/EIA.html
5. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma p. 78
6. www.saynotogmos.org/ud2006/ usept06.php#confused
7. http://www.alternet.org/environment/19628
8. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma p. 182
Shelby Giaccarini is a student at MCLA
~~~
Plato & Myth
Benjamin Hollows
Myths, as allegorical metaphors, attempt to explain the nature of the universe, and promote particular values and moral visions, behind the interplay of images. Myths, and discussion of their uses, are abundant in Plato’s dialogues; and Plato’s association with myth is closely linked with his involvement in the Mysteries. (1) Aside from discussing the role of myth in Republic, Plato makes use of myth to conceal teachings of the Mysteries within his work, to expound those teachings covertly, and to help explain the idea of a teaching with the metaphorical nature of myth.
When revealing theological notions accessible to anyone, the nature of myth as a story (mythos=story) is appealing because it is a means more engaging for the (uninitiated) hearer than straightforward doctrinal discourse. As Plato notes in Statesman, however, these allegorical metaphors are prone to literal interpretation, and the uneducated misunderstand and distort the myth, and abuse or lose the original meaning of something sacred (269b). Throughout Republic, Plato critiques the use of myths which reveal falsehoods about the gods, as this profanes sacred teachings, and misleads the general public who rely heavily on myth to find values and morals. Plato disparages of tales told about the gods as cruel, violent and emotional beings who kill and rape each other, which leads to false belief of the true nature of the gods, and provoke dangerous emotion in humans; this is the reason for banishing myth from his city of justice, constructed in Republic. (2)
“First, telling the greatest falsehood about the most important things doesn’t make a fine story – I mean Hesiod telling us about how Ouranos behaved, how Cronos punished him for it, and how he was in turn punished by his own son. But even if it were true, it should be passed over in silence, not told to foolish young people. And if, for some reason, it has to be told, only a very few people – pledged to secrecy and after sacrificing not just a pig but something great and scarce – should hear it, so that their number is kept as small as possible.” (378a)
Despite such repeated criticisms, Plato uses myth throughout Republic, including the famous allegory of the cave, and the myth which concludes the dialogue in Book X, in which Er returns to earth after a near-death experience to share his knowledge with others. In the allegory of the cave, Plato shows how one must purge oneself of falsehoods before climbing upwards to the Good and the truth; this holds for handling myths the same way, as one must look beyond the literal interpretation of myths. For the safety of the public, Republic blocks all myth and storytelling except that which portrays gods and heroes as virtuous, good beings who help people believe in noble ways -- like the myths Plato constructs at the end of Republic and Phaedo.
Myths also have the appeal, for Plato, of playing upon one’s intuition with the images they present. (3) Although Plato argues for the turn away from sense dependency towards rationality, one must appeal to intuitive means to understand certain laws of nature and glimpse the forms, in which one temporally transcends rationality, which can be done with the help of conjuring images to one’s mind (Rep. 509-511). Humans have knowledge of certain forms within the mind, as humans were once acquainted with their nature (4) and images can help one recollect this knowledge, as shown in Meno (81d). Therefore, the images one may entertain from a myth penetrate one’s mind and may help to restore the knowledge of a form. The myth in Phaedrus, for example, and the images it conjures may help one recollect knowledge of the nature of soul (248); also in Phaedrus, the image of a loved one helps one recollect the form of Beauty (251a).
Plato also uses myths for their ability to conceal, rather than reveal, as some teachings were thought best kept secret, and only the initiated and educated would be able to understand them. This is another method of preventing psychological harm to those who are not prepared, as their insight must be gradually awakened (as Plato suggests metaphorically in the allegory of the cave, it takes gradation to adjust to the light). By only hinting at them in myth, Plato serves the further purpose of avoiding punishment for revealing teachings meant to be kept secret under strict initiation.
Before giving an explanation of the origin and nature of the universe, Timaeus claims, “it is fitting for us to receive the likely story about these things and not to search further for anything beyond it” (29d), and elsewhere stresses the commitment to “likely accounts” (48d). In Phaedrus, before describing the soul, Socrates says that for such an account he must “say what it is like”, as the actual description is a “task for a god” (246a). He describes the nature of such things through myth with simile and metaphor, because of their abstract nature. These matters have a nature beyond our human rationality, and therefore one must appeal to ‘likely accounts’ to describe them. As the images myths produce help play upon one’s intuition, they may reveal an understanding of something beyond the reach human rational abilities.
Plato thus thought the use of myth was both appropriate and necessary for speaking/writing for a general audience, so long as it is closely monitored. Myth’s ability to conjure images and explain abstract notions through metaphor renders it a useful education tool. Given its ability to make the abstract even more hidden, myth is also a medium to share and continue teachings to those prepared to carry on the knowledge of the Mystery tradition, safe from the public eye.
Notes
1. For Plato, the ‘Greek Mystery Religions’ of Orpheus and Eleusis, as well as Pythagorean teachings
2. Plato stresses cultivating the rational portion of the soul; the exaltation of our emotional side is something to avoid. (Republic 605)
3. In this instance, the myth is closely linked with the use of ritual in Mystery rites, as myths are frequently performed by initiates to help stimulate the consciousness of other initiates and their own.
4. Souls within humans glimpsed forms before becoming ensnared in bodies; see Phaedrus
References
Plato. Phaedrus. Translated by Alexander Nehamas & Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1995.
Plato. Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1992.
Plato. Five Dialogues. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2002.
Plato. Timaeus. Translated by Peter Kalkavage. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001.
Plato. Statesman. Translated by J.B. Skemp. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1957.
Benjamin Hollows is a student at MCLA
~~~
Danto’s Slippers
Jacob A. Wheeler
“...The key then is to be able to distinguish between perceptually indistinguishable counterparts.” Arthur quickened his pace as the hands of the clock refused to slow; soon the class would spill out and not a single student would give his lecture the attention it was due.
“You must identify what may be perceptually indistinguishable is not necessarily conceptually indistin-guishable. To identify that which is art and that which is not, you must possess something, as Danto would say, ‘that the eye cannot decry.’ He further specifies this to be both an atmosphere of artistic theory and knowledge of the history of art.” As he finished his breath, the clock ticked its final toc and the class disappeared.
“Just in time” Arthur smiled to himself as he gathered his case and left.
Arthur strolled to and fro avoiding, quite deliberately, the scattered clothes and perilous props that littered the backstage. He checked his Rolex often and his pacing increased; where was she? He awaited his sister, Anna, as she finished her ballet recital; twenty two and still trying to dance; he scoffed and resumed his pensive perambulation. He stopped, tilted his head, and skipped forward. He spied a column, ionic by his conjecture, with a pair of ballet slippers positioned atop. They had fallen, one lying under another in a diagonal resting place. Seconds then minutes passed. He shook himself and left the room; he’d wait in the car.
Anna tossed the shirt aside with frustration, where were they? She spun around and took a deep breath, trying in vain to retrace her steps. Her brother was perpetually impatient and rarely laconic in his displeasure. She paused, he was going to be angry one way or the other; there was no need to worry any further. She sighed as her eyes fell upon the column. She grabbed her shoes and hurried out.
“I’m telling you dear” Arthur protested, “It was magnificent.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“I studied art history and theory at Harvard University.” he continued; his wife was adorable but had no concept for the subtleties of art. “I tell you, I wish there was a signature…I mean the way the light fell upon the top slipper…the shadow it cast. No amateur could have rendered it so.”
Jacob A. Wheeler is a student at MCLA
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