tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52770937161093484362024-03-08T19:10:24.339-05:00Thesis XII OnlineA Philosophical ReviewDavid K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-7965106553800168242022-08-19T13:17:00.000-04:002022-08-19T13:17:38.316-04:00Issue 26.1<h1 align="center" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0in; position: relative; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: castellar, serif;">THESIS XII</span></i></h1><h1 align="center" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0in; position: relative; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h1 align="center" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-size: 14.85px; font-weight: 400; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;">Volume 26• Number 1</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; font-size: 14.85px; font-weight: 400; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: symbol; font-size: 12pt;">Ó</span><span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;"> August, 2022</span></div></h1><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><div style="margin: 0px;">___________________________</div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 10pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 10pt;">: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Was Plato a Platonist? </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Benjamin Ross<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Power, Resource, and Music</span></i></div></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Jay Dante</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Moral Status in Centaurworld</span></i></div></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">David Braden-Johnson<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Constructivism, Education, and Toleration</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Amelia Simmons<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Love, Playing God, and Musical Education</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;">Henry Box</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">The Immorality of Torture</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman, serif;">Nicole Braden-Johnson\</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman, serif;"><i>Pulchritudinous</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Aris Yu<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Patriots and Power</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"> </span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><i style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="text-align: center;">_____________________________</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><b>Was Plato a Platonist?</b></span></div><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"></b><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify;">I was
speaking recently with a student at a college where I was a visitor, and he
used the phrase ‘Plato’s theory of Forms.’ I asked provocatively whether he
thought Plato subscribed to that theory, and he looked at me incredulously. The
entire history of the discipline, at least of his growing acquaintance,
identify the theory as Plato’s, he averred. I pointed out that there is an
ancient controversy, dating at least to the third century and probably going
back to the original Academy itself, about whether Plato advocated any positive
doctrines at all. He wondered how it was possible for Plato not to have
definite views, and even if it were possible, how so many readers and
commentators over two and a half millennia could have missed it. Over lunch, I undertook
to explain.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Conceptions
of Philosophy</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">There are
many different conceptions of philosophy’s functions, methods, and purposes. At
issue in this question of Plato’s philosophical views are two in particular
that are dramatically distinct: philosophy as the accumulation of final,
definite positions bolstered by reasoning on the one hand, and philosophy as
permanently open-ended inquiry on the other. Plato’s choice of literary form,
imaginary dialogue in which the author himself never speaks, and in which lines
of reasoning pursued by its interlocutors are always subject to
reconsideration, suggests he is in the latter camp.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">My
interlocutor cleverly pointed out that, if I were correct in my interpretation
of Plato’s conception of philosophy as inquiry, this would surely count as a Platonic
philosophical position, reflexively undermining the assertion that he had no
positive teachings. (I used to hate it when students were smarter than I am,
but perforce have grown used to it.) I replied, not unreasonably, that we could
view this conception of philosophy as a sort of meta-commitment, itself subject
to re-evaluation in principle, even if not in Plato’s own practice. Evidence
that he did in fact subscribe to it as a meta-philosophical operating assumption
comes from the apocryphal seventh letter, now thought by many scholars genuinely
to represent Plato’s attitude toward his discipline. In it he declares that anyone
who attempts to write a treatise about philosophy clearly fails to understand
it. He goes on to say that there are no written works of his on the subject,
and never will be.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">No written
works by Plato on philosophy? The student was incredulous. His dialogues
practically founded the discipline of philosophy as such! I agreed that Plato
wrote the dialogues, and that they are indeed close to the root of our
discipline, though much of the discipline has grown a very long way from that
root, and perhaps lost touch with it altogether. His point in the seventh
letter seems to be that language, in its paradigmatic declarative, dogmatic
role of articulating doctrines and barking orders, is anathema to philosophy.
Hence the only honest way to write about it is in dialogues, which usually end
in aporetic uncertainty, or otherwise undermine any claim they might have to
being authoritative or final.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">How, then,
if Plato’s conception of philosophy is so robust, and his practice so
powerfully consistent, could so many readers have attributed to him the views
his various characters merely explore? This is a tough question. A conception
of philosophy as the accumulation of answers (rather than a process of
questioning) has proven very difficult to resist historically, and Plato’s
characters are so alive in their pursuit of understanding that readers can
become fascinated at the possibility of achieving it definitively. The written
word is a dangerous thing, as several of the dialogues observe; warning
unheeded, the dialogues themselves have often fallen victim to the deceptive sense
of finality, of completeness, against which they warn.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Forms
Again</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">But what
about the Theory of Forms? he said. Did Plato believe it or didn’t he? I
conceded that it’s unlikely we can determine what he thought personally of this
famous approach to the architecture of knowing. On the evidence of many of the
dialogues, he was clearly interested in working through its possibilities.
Perhaps he adopted it for a time and later set it aside, as one conventional
sequencing of his dialogues suggests (unless of course the sequence is
mistaken, even distorted by scholars’ assumptions about his treatment of the
Forms!). It is worth observing, though, that the opening scene of the dialogue <i>Parmenides
</i>contains an extended and multi-faceted critique of the theory as devastating as
any proposed since, so no simple-minded acceptance fits the evidence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The
student wasn’t satisfied, of course, and wanted to talk about anamnesis,
recollection from past lives, in <i>Meno</i>, which the character Socrates proposes as
an explanation for how we come to know things like Forms. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Oddly, it is not
really an explanation for anything at all, and this bizarre fact acutely needs
explaining. Alas, lunch was over and we
both had to leave, delighted as I would have been to think it through with him.
I couldn’t resist a parting shot, though, and reminded him that Jesus of
Nazareth wasn’t a Christian, either.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Matt Silliman is Emeritus Professor of philosophy at MCLA</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">-----------------------------------</span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Power, Resource, and Music<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">Benjamin Ross</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Human
activity is inescapably shaped by politics. As highly social and interdependent
animals, the process of evolution has occasioned in human beings a striking
natural proclivity towards communication and cooperation. We are instinctually
inclined to form social bonds, an adaptation developed in order to increase our
likelihood of survival given our numerous biological disadvantages — the human
cranium is so large that, in order to fit through the birth canal, we come into
the world underdeveloped and defenseless; we lack organic protection from
predators and the elements, such as fur or claws; we must be taught how to
survive, and are seemingly incapable of existing in the wild without the
production of tools. Out of necessity, our species has evolved to occupy a
particular niche — that of an animal entirely dependent upon (and thus
specialising in) communication (the dissemination and exchange of meaning) and
cooperation (the use of communication to amplify potential for effecting
change). From communication and cooperation emerge sociocultural systems, which
are maintained and organized by means of power distribution.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"> </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">Power</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Power”
is a word used to describe the influence of action; it is a concept which I
will attempt to shed light upon through the introduction of a neologism — </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">thelemaxia</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> — that I feel concisely
captures an underlying idea of great significance. Thelemaxia is a portmanteau
of the Greek words </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">thelema</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> (lit.
“will”) and </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">axia</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> (lit. “value”). It
refers to the valuation of volition — the perceptual-or-actual existential
significance of one’s exertion of will. Thelemaxia is of great import on a
perceptual level, and it is largely through its perceptual significance that it
gains actual influence; conscious motivation to act is principally inspired by
a belief in its significance, and thus it is perceptual thelemaxia which leads
to externally significant effection. In other words, actual social influence is
either hindered or augmented by perceived </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">potential</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
for social influence — actual power emerges to a great extent from the
perceptual allocation of potential power. In this way, the popular narrative
surrounding power distribution serves to actualise and perpetuate its
conditions.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Power
distribution within sociocultural systems is commonly referred to as
“politics.” In accordance with the prior propositions of this essay, I define
“politics” as socioculturally systemic thelemaxia — the construction and
maintenance of sociocultural systems of volition-valuation.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">Resource</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Political
structures, however, do not exist in a vacuum, uncaused and inexplicable. Power
distribution (politics) is tightly intertwined with the distribution of
resources (economics); correspondingly, thelemaxia (volition-valuation) and
political influence can be understood through their respective interconnections
with capital (resource-valuation) and economic influence. This is relationship
is expressed in the bipartite “primacy thesis” of Karl Marx’s theory of
historical materialism:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">“The first [aspect of the thesis] states that the nature of a
society’s economic structure is explained by the level of development of its
productive forces, and the second that the nature of the superstructure—the
political and legal institutions of society—is explained by the nature of the
economic structure.” (Wolff & Leopold, 2021)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Because
the material existence of the human being is dependent upon the consumption of
material resources, the valuation of material resources is entailed by the
valuation of human existence. The essence of valuation consists in existential
valuation, which arises in mutual dependence with resource valuation;
therefore, a system of value quantification (money) serves to indirectly
represent a measurement of existential value through its relationship with material
resources. It is literally a measurement of human life, because it represents
the distribution of the material resources and labour which sustain human life.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Within
economic society, money is the medium through which thelemaxia is actualized.
Its valuation as the very signifier of value renders it the arbiter of
influence, a dispassionate metric by which the significance of human life and
liberty is oppressively, unequally assessed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Exertion
of volition rests upon possession of resource, helplessly entangling thelemaxia
and capital in a self-fulfilling feedback loop. To wield wealth is to wield
power; it is to directly manipulate the will and spirit of others, to deprive
others of their sense of influence and worth. It is to limit and dominate the
horizons of fulfillment and self-actualization, establishing a system of
subservience and hopelessness. Economic stratification is the backbone of
empowerment and disempowerment — not merely actual forces, but perceptual,
shaping the interior dimension of reality for everyone on a daily basis. It is
this interplay between the perceptual and the actual which serves to produce
and perpetuate these power dynamics.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Revolution,
then, is tasked with overturning not only actual disempowerment, but perceptual
disempowerment as well; i.e., in order to attain actual empowerment in an
economic or political sense, the oppressed must be perceptually empowered in an
existential sense — their thelemaxia must be affirmed. The proletariat must
truly believe in the power of their revolution. This is a profound struggle in
the face of the alienation, despondency, and tremendous suffering which
systemic oppression engenders in its victims. A daunting challenge indeed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">Music</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Music”
I will define in the context of this essay as “the sociocultural use of sound’s
aesthetic qualities to express meaning, emotion, and/or values.” My primary
claim is that this practice is inseparable from the systemic volition-valuation
which shapes the distribution of power in society. I further claim that all art
is political — and even </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">all action</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">,
as it involves the exertion of will. I will be providing more particular
reasoning in this essay, however, for my claim regarding the practice of music
specifically.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Firstly,
I assert that the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">intentionality</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">valuation</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> of music itself directly
echoes the valuation of volition — the ascription of existential significance
to music (a product of willful action) is necessarily an affirmation of the
musician’s thelemaxia, and thus equips the musician with political influence.
To expand this statement, aesthetic valuation entails the empowerment of the
artist, because it grants existential significance to the act of artistic
creation and the meaning, emotion, and/or values which it expresses. It is very
much the sociocultural valuation of art which gives it political power — its
perceived importance, regardless of whether its valuation is positive or
negative. Often, that which is negatively valued by a particular society or
culture (taboo) is of great significance to its distribution of power, and is
actually empowered by its negative valuation. An example of this might be the
prohibitive treatment of poetry in the ideal city of Plato’s Republic; it is
negatively valued rather than devalued, and is empowered by its description as
a corruptive force.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As
an interpretive form of raw expression, art is central to communication within
society and culture, and has held this vital position throughout all of human
history. Its sociocultural valuation is a given, which means that its political
power is as well. The production of art is a revolutionary act because it
serves to aesthetically appropriate the power of valuation, functioning as a
vehicle through which the intensity of the subjective human experience is revealed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Benjamin Ross is a student at MCLA</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">References</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">Adajian, Thomas, "The Definition of Art", <i>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>
(Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/art-definition/"><span style="color: #1155cc; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/art-definition/</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">Farr, Arnold, "Herbert Marcuse", <i>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i> (Summer 2021 Edition),
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;"><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/marcuse/"><span style="color: #1155cc; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/marcuse/</span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">Wolff, Jonathan and David Leopold, "Karl Marx", <i>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>
(Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;"><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/marx/"><span style="color: #1155cc; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;">https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/marx/</span></a></span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span> </span></p><div style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">-----------------------------------</span></p></span></div><div style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.85px; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif;">Moral Status in Centaurworld</b></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"></b></span></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 10pt;">Jay Dante</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider offered an apple to her horse. Horse gladly
accepted. They looked up at the ruins of their village from one of the more
intact buildings. Horse looked at Rider, sensing the human’s distress. She
pressed her muzzle to her rider’s forehead. Rider smiled, saying, “It seems we
have some time to rest before the Minotaurs come back. Goodnight, Horse.”</span></div><div style="text-align: left;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
settled onto the floor and the two slept.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
awoke in a different and cloyingly brighter place. She gasped. She sighed, “Oh
right. I’m in Centaurworld now. That was just a memory.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Despite
finding a new herd, Horse missed the simple routine of following Rider’s orders
instead of making her own decisions. Before, she didn’t worry about hurting
others despite participating in the war against the Minotaurs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">She
cringed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">When
she first arrived in Centaurworld, she had been so eager to get back into the
fight, to crush skulls under her hooves, but now things were different. Now she
was a moral agent independent of Rider’s judgment. She had done things in
Centaurworld completely beyond what she could have imagined back home. She
apologized to a leaf! The craziest part is that the leaf yelled at her until
she did. She would have stepped on the leaves without a second thought if it
weren’t for the fact that leaves in Centaurworld were not only sentient, but
sapient too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">She
was sapient herself now, Horse realized. She could talk, count, and sing. She
hadn’t tried to cultivate such abilities; she just found she had them when they
were useful. She resisted developing her moral compass any further, but slowly
Horse had learned moral thinking was invaluable for navigating Centaurworld.
She found herself considering the moral worth of those around her no matter how
close they were to her. She was a moral agent and it hurt.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">When
she reunited with Rider, Horse asked her, “Did it hurt?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider
was caught off guard. She replied, “What?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
clarified, “Did it hurt when you developed the capacity for moral thinking?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider
considered her answer before responding, “I don’t know. I guess I never thought
about it. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have it. Maybe when I was a
very very small child, but there wasn’t a single moment when I went from
thinking amorally to thinking with right and wrong in mind. It happened
slowly.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
nodded. Though her own moral development happened more rapidly than Rider’s, it
didn’t happen all at once. It probably wasn’t over either. Horse doubted her
moral development would ever be complete.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider’s
laughter broke Horse from her musing. “Remember when we were little and we
stomped on bugs for fun?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
lowered her ears, embarrassed, “Yeah.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider
continued, “That was totally messed up. I’d never do that now, but at least
bugs don’t feel pain.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“What
makes you think they don’t?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Do
they? I didn’t know.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“They
do, at least here in Centaurworld. They told me themselves.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“But
those aren’t even bugs, they’re bug-centaurs. Everything seems to have sapience
here even if in our world they wouldn’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“But
seriously, bugs do feel pain. According to the Smithsonian Magazine1, insects
can feel both acute and chronic pain.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider
raised an eyebrow, “How did you have access to the Smithsonian Magazine?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
blinked, equally baffled, and raised her hooves up in a shrug. Horse coughed
into her hoof and asked, “Anyway, do you… ever feel bad about killing all those
Minotaurs?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider’s
disgust was evident on her face. She said, “What? No! Of course not. They
destroyed our homes and killed our families!”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“They’re
still people.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“No.
They’re not. They can’t reason like we can.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Just
a few months ago, I couldn’t reason like you. Would you have been glad to
sacrifice me if you had to?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“No!
You were always different. You're my horse. I have special obligations to
you2.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“What
if you saw another horse in danger? Would you help them?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Then
it’s not your care for me that stops you from hurting me. It’s something else.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Something
else? Like what?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Like
… my sentience. I’m sapient now, but I’ve been sentient ever since I was born.
I could feel pain even then. Do you feel worse about crushing those bugs now
that you know they could feel it?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“Yeah.
I had no idea. I didn’t realize things that couldn't scream could still feel
pain.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“The
Minotaurs did scream, though. I remember that. I looked forward to it. Rider,
doesn’t that make me a bad person?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“No.
I can’t hold you responsible for something you didn’t know was wrong. You
didn’t understand...” Rider realized what that entailed. “…but I did. I also
had my reasons! The Minotaurs, they hurt us. They took everything from us… but
if they didn’t understand and they could feel pain… then the least they
deserved was a painless death3.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
noticed Rider’s tears as soon as they pooled in her eyes. Horse gently wiped
them away.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Horse
asked again, “Did it hurt?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rider
smiled and said, “Yeah.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 13.3333px;"><i>Jay Dante is a student at MCLA</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>References</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(1994) Jenni,
Kathie. “Dilemmas in Social Philosophy: Abortion and Animal Rights.” <i>Social
Theory and Practice, vol. 20, no. 1</i>, pp. 59–83.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(2019) Daley,
Jason. “Study Finds Insects Can Experience Chronic Pain.” Smithsonian.com.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(2006) Silliman,
Matthew R. <i>Sentience and Sensibility</i>. Parmenides Publishing.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;">-----------------------------------</span></p></div></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Constructivism, Education, and Toleration<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">David Braden-Johnson</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Once upon a time, a
valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because
they were possessed with the idea of gravity. ---- </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: small; text-align: center;">Karl Marx, <i>The German Ideology</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Radical constructivism
(RC), the epistemological view that one can only know what one has individually
“constructed” in experience -- has perhaps received its greatest attention as a
theory with important implications for teaching and learning. Its founder, E.
von Glasersfeld, counts among the theory’s blessings "a profound change of
attitude toward the process of learning and the mental operations of
students," with the "most important discovery" being that the
student's responses "make sense in [his or her] subjectively constructed
world" (“Knowing without Metaphysics”).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Of course, RC is far
from unique in supposing that a student’s views, whether familiar or foreign to
others, often are perfectly consonant with and give important clues to the
subjectively constructed worldview of that student: such are the dictates of
common sense and sound pedagogy. Common sense and educational effectiveness are
no doubt good things, but hardly the stuff of an exciting or “radical” theory.
To that end, RC’s unhappy marriage of subjectivist perspectivalism (“everything
we say about the world is said by someone” and related truisms) and antirealism
(“I can’t say anything about the extra-subjective world” and related
solipsistic musings) weds von Glasersfeld’s commonplace “discovery” to a rather
dramatic claim: that our commonsensical commitment to an observer-independent
(“real,” “objective” or “naturally existing”) world that contains and
constrains all of our subjectively constructed worldviews is both wrongheaded
and inherently intolerant.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In some constructivist
circles, a certain degree of intolerance of anything remotely realist is
apparently a virtue. In our first exchange in the journal <i>Cybernetics
and Human Knowing,</i> von Glasersfeld counterposed his “questions” to my
"answers,” implying that a democratic and inquiring (and untruthed)
constructivism compares favorably with the (intolerant and truth-seeking) dogma
that is realism. At the close of the exchange, he wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If
you feel like answering these questions, we might get closer to specifying the
differences between our views, rather than continue trying to prove the other
wrong (“Questions Rather Than Answers,” <i>Cybernetics and Human
Knowing</i>, vol. 1, 4).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Attempting to answer
these questions in the name of (anti-answer, anti-truth claim) toleration would
be foolish: no one is in principle or practice opposed to answers. Even in this
instance, von Glasersfeld’s long list of questions contained nearly as many
declarative sentences designed to provide evidence for his view and against
those, like mine, which might find fault with constructivism. The passage
from von Glasersfeld continues:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">From
my constructivist point of view, as you know, problems always offer more than
one way to find a solution.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And from mine. Every
interesting intellectual problem has more than one solution path. As I wrote
that very same year in the journal <i>Radical Teacher</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Mathematical
knowledge – like musical and artistic abilities – is not the property of
experts but the reward for concentrated individual and collective effort.
When learning is our goal, creativity is more important than quickness;
doing our best to find a solution is more important than getting it; and even
partial understanding is to be preferred over memorization.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> And<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Of
course, students themselves often remain unaware of their own abilities,
preferring to receive (an impossibility) rather than to create (in a
quasi-constructivist fashion) mathematical understanding (“Mathematics for
the Many,” <i>Radical Teacher</i>, 42.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">These comments were
designed to exhibit my sympathies for what von Glasersfeld labels “trivial
constructivism” (TC) – the prosaic view that <i>all knowledge, in
contrast to its many objects, is a construct.</i> My point is simply that
constructivism’s radicalization, or denial of knowledge’s extra-subjective
objects, is logically incompatible with commonplace assertions about
knowledge’s constructive character. Hence my suggestion, dating from this
original exchange, that progressive educators everywhere reject RC in favor of
CR, <i>constructivist realism</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In sharp contrast to von
Glasersfeld’s often nuanced forays into the field of education, one of his
admirers, Dewey Dykstra, once penned a meandering obloquy against something
called the “elitist-realist paradigm.” In Dykstra’s view,
“elitist-realism” emerges as a “rationally and ethically” suspect paradigm
resting at the heart of standard instructional practices and secreting its
attendant, evidently evil, notions of “truth” and “reality.” Though
Dykstra does provide some welcome nudges in the direction of student-centered,
exploration- and/or misconception-based classroom practices, the unseemly view
Dykstra describes as “realist” is simply a position made of straw. I am
referring to his contribution to the premier issue of <i>Constructivist
Foundations</i>; a journal that, in its very mission statement, farcically
rejects in the name of a “less dogmatic and open approach,” contributions
critical of radical constructivist dogma. It is hardly surprising, then, to
find this bit of cake-and-eat-it-too thinking buried in the journal’s “scope
and aims” section:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Constructivist
approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is considered
beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained
from.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(We
are to forgive those references I assume.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And, mimicking von
Glasersfeld, Dykstra embarrassingly warns would-be critics against attempting
to “prove RC wrong,” rather than to “understand” it, as, apparently, none of
his critics by definition ever will. Consider also Humberto Maturana, the
neurobiologist and creator, with Francisco Varela, of the theory of autopoiesis
(the self-organization of the living), who famously labors to persuade the rest
of us to reject all truth-claims on the basis of his truth-claim that each and
every claim is nothing other than an illegitimate "demand for
obedience":<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Whenever
we want to compel somebody else to do something according to our wishes, and we
cannot or do not want to use brutal force, we offer what we claim is an
objective rational argument. We do this under the implicit or explicit
pretense that the other cannot refuse what our argument claims because its
validity as such rests on its reference to the real. We
also do so under the additional explicit or implicit claim that the real is universally
and objectively valid because it is independent of what we do, and once it is
indicated it cannot be denied ("Reality: The Search for Objectivity
or the Quest for a Compelling Argument?").<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In
a similar fashion, Stuart Umpleby writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">One
implication of the notion that each person constructs his or her own reality on
the basis of experience is that one should not impose one's views on
another person by force or coercion. Efforts to influence others should be
limited to conversation and persuasion, to comparing and interpreting
experiences. That is, given what we know about the biological basis of
knowledge, no one is justified in believing that he or she has a correct
understanding of the world and that others are wrong. Some views or theories
may be superior to others in that they fit a larger range of phenomena,
but no view can be shown to match "the way the world really
is." Hence, even the creators of highly regarded scientific knowledge
should be suitably humble about their achievements. (Target Article
86; <i>Karl Jaspers forum</i>.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“One should not impose
one’s views on another person," not because of our prior commitment to
some ethical principle or other that forbids it, but because “each person
constructs his or her own reality”? Given “what we know” about the biology of
cognition, “no one is justified in believing that he or she knows or has the
“correct understanding of” anything? And the world (really) is such that “no
view can be shown to match the way the world really is”? How ought one, in the
name of toleration, reply to such a dizzying barrage of <i>non sequiturs</i>?
Acquiesce to its illogic and accept the invitation to proselytize in favor of
Maturana’s antinomous autopoiesis? Take refuge in the cozy, solipsistic
confines of one’s subjectively constructed bubble, all the while insisting that
one’s constructed “others” – especially those pesky “critical others” -- do the
same? Better simply to point out that RC’s very radicalism tragically subverts
that theory’s every claim to toleration. More formally, here is the Maturanian
and RC position I reject:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(1) To claim to know S is to be intolerant toward those who do not
claim to know S. (The “intolerant realist”)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(2) Not to claim to know S is to be tolerant toward those who do
or do not claim to know S. (The “tolerant constructivist”)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The problem is that
neither (1) nor (2) is at all plausible. Intolerance is not a property of
just <i>any</i> knowledge claim, but arises in connection with claims
to know some proposition S, where S is a defense or instance of intolerant
behavior. Moreover, those who oppose intolerance <i>cannot but accept as
true claims that oppose intolerance</i>, just as there are truth- and
reality-claims aplenty in Maturana’s missive against truth claims above. Truth
is a coefficient of toleration, notwithstanding these antirealist divagations.
The case against intolerant behavior or beliefs entails identifying and
attacking pro-persecution premises and not, as Maturana would have it,
knowledge in general. Notice, for example, that RC's claim that <i>all
views are "equally legitimate"</i> is, of course, just one view
among other supposedly equally legitimate views, including the intolerant view
that only one view is legitimate and the realist view that many, but not all,
views are legitimate. (I do not, of course, deny that I find RC – and not its
defenders or their legal and moral right to believe what they wish -- an
illegitimate, because self-reflexively inconsistent, epistemological
view.) In this sense, RC must remain silent about the relative merits of
its own view. What is worse, however, is that RC is again self-inconsistent,
for the view that all views are equally legitimate requires that we do what is
certainly impossible, namely, <i>accept as equally legitimate the opposing
view that not all views are equally legitimate.</i> A radically
constructivist view of toleration founded on the wholesale rejection of truth,
objectivity, and the real, provides no justification for persecution or
intolerance, nor any check upon them. Rather, it is specific convictions or
beliefs thought to be true -- in particular, the beliefs that persecution and
intolerance are wrong or should be avoided -- that render us tolerant toward
others and provide the theoretical space for a plurality of critical
discourses.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">There can be no doubt
that RC has proven itself to be an immensely popular doctrine. The explanation
offered here is that most self-described constructivists are in fact committed
only to a trivial version (and, therefore, to a constructivist version of
realism), while the antirealist excesses simply go unnoticed. It is possible
that still others enjoy the sense of novelty and radicalism that often
accompanies the wholesale, yet flawed, rejection of tradition (in this case,
traditional realist epistemology and metaphysics). Of course, trivial
constructivist claims, together with the constructivist realism that
substantiates those claims, are entirely compatible with the progressive focus,
in educational theory, philosophy, and social life generally, on diverse
perspectives, versions, and ideas of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;"><i>David Braden-Johnson teaches philosophy at MCLA</i></span></span></p><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">-----------------------------------</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Love, Playing God, and Musical Education</span></b></p><div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Amelia Simmons</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">School curriculums teach and require students
to explore a variety of subjects they may not enjoy or find applicable to their
life or passions. This is a good thing. How will we know what we enjoy without
being exposed to it? The problem with teaching these variety of subjects is
that they are not given equal attention. Subjects like English, Math, History
(pretty exclusively U.S. history), and Science can be easily observed as taking
priority. Those subjects are mandatory and remain mandatory throughout
institutional learning. Those subjects are allotted large blocks of time, and
succeeding in them results in concrete praise, and statewide competition. These
subjects become the metric for a school’s success. Meanwhile subjects like art,
and music, are often dismissed as "electives". Electives are given
less time, less money, and less meaning, or power in judging a student’s
success. Electives are often creative pursuits, in which measurements of understanding
are less objective. This leads to these creative subjects being taught in ways
that cater to measurable success. The creative subject this essay focuses on is
music, and the ways people are often miseducated to miss out on the joy,
community, and freedom music contains.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">Music is creative and concrete, intuitive and
rehearsed, free and formulaic, and naturally attractive to diverse kinds of
learners and thinkers. Music education should be funded and taught in a way
that reveals and benefits from its multi-faceted nature.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">Most children are encouraged, or often forced,
to pick up a musical instrument, yet most adults do not even touch the thing
their chubby childhood hands fumbled over at the command of their instructor.
Horror stories are horribly common. At any given moment, somewhere on the
globe, prepubescent tears fall upon piano keys, a tuba hyperventilates, violins
erupt, violently. Bleary-eyed in blind pursuit of perfection seek decomposing
composer praise; the notes begin to swim in their horizontal prisons. Classical
pieces are neglected, or else agonized over. Playing music becomes miserable,
becomes a chore. Less than 50% of students who have received music education
continue playing their instrument after the age of seventeen (</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">Warner-Czyz,
2021). This is a massive failure on the
part of musical education. Music is not despised. Music is a cherished, and
unavoidable fixation of humankind. The problem with musical instruction is that
it is far removed, not only from the student’s relationship with music, but
also from what music joyously and intrinsically is.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">Joy. I want to talk about joy, happiness, bliss, ecstasy,
pleasure, and all their pulchritudinous synonyms. People are pleasure-seeking
animals. People learn, do, and learn to do things because they are pleasurable.
People learn the most pleasurable things involve work, discomfort, even pain.
People are willing to sacrifice for pleasure, willing to sever themselves from
what is predictable and easy, willing to grease their elbows, and put their
respective noses to their respective grindstones. It is not an accident almost
all songs are love songs. Love is pain and love is pleasure. Love is work and
love is play. To love something you have to be a part of it, a hand in it,
holding. Loving something goes beyond a singular autonomy, to love is to
explore, and to know, and to know you will never know. Love must involve you,
and love must be free of you. Love is a labor we willingly resign ourselves and
our time to.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">People love music. People seem unable to live without music,
and yet so many young music lovers find themselves completely discouraged by
their musical educations. One could argue this is because some people are
lazier, or less musically inclined than others. Just as some students are more
attracted to math and sciences while others are enamored by the humanities,
only certain kinds of students are willing to dedicate themselves to practicing
and playing music. Sure. Some students are more willing to spend an hour
everyday rehearsing the song they have been forced to rehearse, in exactly the
way they are supposed to rehearse it. Some students may love doing that, and
other students may be more capable of doing things they don't love, but what
about the other students? What about the pot lid cymbal crashers, and tightrope
guitar string walkers thinking they've just invented the blues? To love is to
invent. Work without invention, is to work for someone else, some real asshole.
Taking the invention and creativity out of something people love will make them
quit, and not because they are lazy, but because caring, and working is hard
enough when it results in pleasure, and nearly impossible when it's devoid of
it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">Music is so universally loved because it is more than one
thing. It is a limitless sonic atmosphere. To play music is to play God
striking lightning across a sea of possibility. Of course, a sea of possibility
is vast and daunting, but we all want to shoot lighting out of our fingertips every
once in a while. In most educational environments students are, understandably,
taught they are not God. How could they be God when they did not invent the
dense musical mathematics waiting for their input? Gods are supposed to be
omnipotent, all knowing. Gods have big hands and hit no wrong notes. If the
student is not God than the student must make do with God’s word, sprung from God’s
staff, splattered across God’s sheet music. Maybe Chopin gets to be God, or
Mozart, but not the lowly student, the student doesn't even get to worship at
the church of their choice.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">For musical education to be effective it must cater to its
students the way music does. Of course, there is groundwork to be laid, scales
to practice, and parts to memorize, but this is only a piece of musical
creation, it is only a means to expression. People make art as a means of
expressing something, and that something is often an extension of themselves, a
feeling, something for which a map, or manual does not exist. If expression is
not taught and exploration is not encouraged, faith is naturally lost.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">Even if we know how music ought to be taught, and the
benefits of teaching it a major barrier still exists, lack of funding. Musical
instruments cost money, and can't exactly be passed down like textbooks, which
are less fragile and don't get repeatedly blown into and aggressively fingered.
The public school system's solution to this financial problem is the plastic parental
nightmare of: The Recorder. The recorder is no one’s favorite instrument, but
it is small, simple, and costs approx. seven dollars. I have distinct memories
of elementary school recitals, fifty kids on risers, lips pressed to plastic in
perfect unison. We sounded fine. We sounded like fifty kids playing recorders,
or pretending to play recorders, because the only thing worse than a recorder
symphony is a recorder cacophony. Actually, I think my only distinctive memory
of those concerts is someone falling backwards off the highest riser. I don't
even know what songs we played. The fact of the matter is cheap or unexpressive
instruments further erode the joy of playing music.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">Music programs do not receive proper funding because the
importance of music is consistently undermined by educational metrics. It could
be said that musical knowledge does not lend itself to other disciplines. Music
can't inform English composition in the way mathematics are necessary to inform
scientific research. Musical achievement is also difficult to measure,
especially when taught with a more creative and holistic approach. Musical
achievement very rarely leads to grants or extra funding to schools in the way
that academic success does. Defending the value of music and creative
exploration in a system built on defining and achieving "success"
appears grim, but what if playing music can do something nothing else can?
Playing music activates a brain more fully than any other activity, full on
neural synapse mosh pit. Playing music benefits cognitive function as a whole
and therefore cannot afford to be neglected. To shamelessly quote Albert
Einstein,</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">"I
live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy
in life out of music."(Viney, 2016)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">Amelia Simmons is a student at MCLA</i> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;">References</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Ruth
N, Müllensiefen D (2021) Survival of musical activities. When do young people
stop making music? <a href="PLoS ONE 16(11): e0259105. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259105" target="_blank">PLoS ONE 16(11): e0259105.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259105</a>.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span>Viney, Liam. “Good Vibrations:
The Role of Music in Einstein's Thinking.”<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The
Conversation</i>, 3 Sept. 2020,
<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-vibrations-the-role-of-music-in-einsteins-thinking-54725">https://theconversation.com/good-vibrations-the-role-of-music-in-einsteins-thinking-54725</a>.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; text-align: center;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;">-----------------------------------</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Immorality of Torture</span></b></p><div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Henry Box</span></span></p></div></div></div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">According to the French philosopher Michel
Foucoult, torture is defined as </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the extraction of confessions by interrogation using the
systematic application of pain</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. This pain
can be physical or psychological. The
Geneva Convention, adopted first in 1929 and updated in 1949, became
international law and set a standard for humanitarian treatment during war. It
made torture illegal in all cases (Mayerfield). However, despite its universal
unlawfulness, torture continues to be justified by those in power as a moral
necessity and utilized, in most cases, without punishment of the offending
parties. The authorities who use torture claim it to be morally justified
because it provides them with information that saves lives. Torture is never
justifiable from a moral position because there is a great risk of an innocent
person being tortured and the information gathered from torture victims is
generally unreliable, negating any justification for undertaking such extreme
measures. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">An example of the use of torture in recent
history is the story of Abu Zubaydah who was tortured by the CIA at a secret
prison in Thailand beginning in 2002. The US used the term “enhanced
interrogation techniques” in a thinly veiled attempt to disguise its actions.
The popular sentiment at the time, fearful after the attacks of September 11,
2001, was anxiousness and a desire to track down al-Qaeda leaders to prevent
future attacks. Politicians, military leaders, and intelligence organizations
had a “do whatever it takes” mentality to accomplish their goals. Zubaydah
describes being kept awake for as long as “two or three weeks.” He was put in
stress positions that included confinement in small boxes that made movement
impossible. He was also the first prisoner to be subjected to waterboarding
whereby a prisoner is strapped down to a table naked and has water poured over
their hooded mouth and nose while their head is in a lowered position. Zubaydah
suffered these inhumane treatments because the CIA believed him to be a top
al-Qaeda operative. Ironically, he was not. He was a jihadist, but he did not
have access to the master planning of the terrorist organization. He suffered
this torture over a four-year period (Rosenberg). This case gets to the heart
of the immorality of torture. The basis of the United States’ judicial system
recognizes that a person needs to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in
a court of law before being condemned to punishment. However, the use of
torture does not offer that process and thus is rife with the potential for
error. As in the case of Zubaydah, assumptions are made without a thorough
review of the evidence. There was no impartial judge or jury. The idea that the
prisoner has information that is critical and timely to extract inevitably
creates a situation where the captors are not able to rationally assess the
truth in that moment. The rush for what is deemed critical information makes it
impossible to ensure that the prisoner has the information that the captors
want.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is only in hindsight that the intelligence
gathered during torture can be evaluated for truthfulness and usefulness. The
rush to torture combined with the time it takes to fully investigate the
information extracted during this process makes the information of little to no
value. It creates a perfect storm for mistakes to be made and, as in the case
of Zubaydah, for a prisoner to be held and tortured over a long period of time
without cause or even benefit to the torturing parties. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11.5pt;">Proponents of torture believe that there is a moral
obligation to extract information by any means possible when it has the
potential to save lives (Johnson). However, history has shown that this
justification is unsound. To begin with, under extreme pain and duress,
prisoners will say anything to make the pain stop. This includes making up lies
to temporarily satisfy their tormentors. Courts have recognized this trap for
many years and routinely discount any evidence that has been gathered under
torture or the threat of torture. Zubaydah’s false confessions, extracted over
the course of his years long torture, was inhumane but also wasted valuable
time as operatives investigated his baseless claims made in an attempt to
temporarily halt his pain (Rosenberg). Torture rarely yields good information.
This happens even in less severe situations when police interrogation
techniques create anxiety enough to provoke false confessions by the
interviewee in an effort to end the psychological stress they are under. The
long historical precedent of innocent people being subjected to torture and the
poor information that is gathered from the technique obliterates any moral
justification that authorities offer to defend its use.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">Henry Box is a student at MCLA</i> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11.5pt;"><b>References</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Braden-Johnson,
David, and Silliman, Matthew. “Tortured Ethics.” Social Philosophy Today, 2008.
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Mayfield, Jamie. “In Defense of the Absolute
Prohibition of Torture.” <i>Public Affairs</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Quarterly</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> 22, no. 2 (2008): 109–28. </span><a></a><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441485"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441485</span></a><span class="MsoCommentReference"><!--[if !supportAnnotations]--><a class="msocomanchor" href="file:///C:/Users/a10001251/Downloads/PHIL100-CRITO%20torture.docx#_msocom_1" id="_anchor_1" language="JavaScript" name="_msoanchor_1">[DBJ1]</a><!--[endif]--> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">.</span><a name="_Hlk109382132"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rosenberg,
Carol. “What the C.I.A.'s Torture Program Looked like to the Tortured.” The New
York Times, December 4, 2019. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia%20torture-drawings.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia
torture-drawings.html</a></span></span></p><div>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">-----------------------------------</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN"><b>Pulchritudinous</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">Nicole Braden-Johnson</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Sometimes I think someone upstairs saved me from
being ordinary."</span></span></i><span lang="EN"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">-- Michel Petrucciani, French
jazz pianist (1962-1999)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">Perched
precariously on the piano bench,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">Is a short, square,
spectacled, sparsely haired man.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">Beneath the skin,
his many-fractured bones ache,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">And in his mind, he
knows he is inching toward the grave.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">The monster looms
before him,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">With its rows of
ebony and ivory teeth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">At four years old,
he took a hammer to the incredible beast—<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">Now bare-handed he
tackles it with the same zest.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">And from deep
within all this pain and fear,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">The
ever-constricting mortal coil,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">Spills forth all
the feeling of life—the good, the hopeful,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span lang="EN">The
pulchritudinous.</span><span lang="EN" style="text-align: center;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11pt; text-align: center;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Palatino Linotype", serif; text-align: center;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">Nicole Braden-Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the University of Konstanz</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;">-----------------------------------</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Patriots and Power</span></b></p><div style="text-align: left;"><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: palatino linotype, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Aris Yu</span></span></p></div></div><div class="msocomtxt" id="_com_1" language="JavaScript">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">The youth of today's America are so unpatriotic that
they've resorted to drastic means to express their distaste for their country;
they've gone so far as to leave unflattering comments on the U.S. Army's
Twitter. Somewhere along the line, the apathy that I know much of my generation
feels towards the constant barrage of history-making events we live through
turned to disdain for the country at the center of so much of it. It's
understandable: the banner of "patriotism" has been used to justify everything
from the war on Afghanistan (Hartig 2021) to spending millions of dollars on a
border wall (Roberts 2016). By definition, patriotism is nothing more or less
than "love for or devotion to one's own country" (Merriam-Webster),
which sounds harmless. However, through observing the actions of so-called
"patriots" throughout history, one can see that its definition has
been repeatedly perverted to justify acts like white nationalism, caging
immigrant children, and mass bombings of civilian areas. In all these cases,
the perpetrators took "patriotism" to mean something more along the
lines of "my country's interests are my interests, and they take
precedence over all else". These acts are, of course, inexcusable, but
they are what we have come to know patriotism for. This means that while a
moral and rational person might still choose to be a patriot, doing so requires
them to intentionally ignore the societal norm of "patriotism" and
forge their own path.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It should be made clear that the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">idea</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> of patriotism, of putting one's own country first, is not in
and of itself an issue. We need not abandon any prior commitments to our
nations. To be a moral and rational human being, one must of course care about
those outside of one's own country, but to prioritize one thing over another is
not necessarily to dismiss the other as unworthy of attention. Otherwise, to
give one example, working as, for example, a teacher, would mean a lack of
concern for human life because you could instead be going to medical school.
Similarly, patriotism—to support one's own country most, in accordance with
both one's ability and one's emotional investment—need not mean a lack of
concern for other nations. It is obviously easier to make change when one is
familiar with what they intend to change, meaning that the way to best make a
difference might well be to focus on the immediately relevant.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This raises the question of how an innocuous concept
could be used to rationalize so much harm. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Examining the things that people attempt
to justify this way, the primary issue quickly becomes clear: these people take
"patriotism" to mean the protection of one's ideal of the country,
rather than the country as it already is. This new "patriotism" is
then used to commit atrocities against groups seen as "other", like
immigrants or minorities, because in the perpetrator's eyes they are not part
of the country. In doing so, they make a choice to place their idea of their
country over the real people who live in it. To declare that the protection of
one's country as it "should be" is more important than the lives of
the people who do not fit into that ideal is callous at best and morally
bankrupt at worst. If patriotism is not itself bad but "patriotism"
as most use it is, then it stands to reason that the issue is with society's
version of the term. Knowing this lends credence to the idea of needing to
separate oneself from the word as it is now commonly defined.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Given all the baggage that patriotism carries, though,
one might ask: why bother? It would be easy to dismiss "patriotism"
as corrupt beyond repair. While an individual can hold onto their patriotic
pride and not be a worse person for it, it is impossible for such a concept to
go uncorrupted as it spreads further. Patriotism has always devolved into
nationalism wherever it goes; the reprehensible acts mentioned in the initial
argument are, after all, by no means localized to the States. It would be
reasonable to expect a renewal of patriotism to end the same way it always
does. To hold onto the idea as something noble, to push it forward without
being wary of the consequences, is to refuse to accept the inevitability of
others tainting it once again. I would agree that to continue to push forward
with patriotism in the current political climate is to further fuel the fires
of toxic nationalism. However, it is shortsighted to blame this on patriotism
itself. To say that patriotism is "corrupted" to form these
destructive ideas is to concede that it has been twisted along the way; ergo,
the original idea of patriotism is not the problem. The only way to stop this
corruption from seeping in once more is to teach patriotism better. The
arguments against patriotism do little good if they never reach those who need
to hear them. Ensuring that those who preach the ideal know its shortcomings
and pass them on will snuff out the seed of toxicity before it has the chance
to bloom.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As for why one would choose to cling to the idea
considering all the trouble it has brought thus far, the answer is simple:
patriotism is power. After all, those atrocities were fueled by something. Even
those deeds I consider reprehensible came from a genuine concern for the world,
and I believe that can be used. If patriotism is cleansed of its poison, what
is left is only the intense desire to see one's country at its best. In my
experience, passion like that is what brings humans to want change in the first
place. Holding onto patriotism is certainly dangerous, and I have no intention
of denying that. Still, if encouraging people to adapt their national pride
with the times rather than destroy it has a chance to help usher in a better
future, that's a risk I'm willing to take in the name of hope.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 11pt;"><i style="color: #333333; font-family: "palatino linotype", serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">Aris Yu is a student at MCLA</i> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><b>References</b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hartig,
Hannah, and Carroll Doherty. “Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11.”
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2 Sep. 2021, https://pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/02/two-decades-later-the-enduring-legacy-of-9-11/.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Patriotism.”
Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriotism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Roberts,
Dan, and Rory Carroll. “Trump Pledges to Promote American 'Patriotism' in
Schools as President.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media Ltd., 1 Sept.
2016,
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/01/donald-trump-american-patriotism-schools-immigration.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S. Army
[@USArmy]. "Ready. Willing. Able. @FortBenning turns civilians into
Infantry and Armor Soldiers ready to fight and win our nation's wars as leaders
in the #USArmy." Twitter, 16 April
2022, https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1515455914656026626.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p></div>
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</div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; text-indent: 0in;"></span></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-32064296443906522992019-10-25T14:30:00.002-04:002019-11-01T12:56:36.033-04:00Issue 25.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 align="center" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0in; position: relative; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "castellar" , serif;">THESIS XII</span></i></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "mistral"; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;">Volume 25 • Number 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12pt;">Ó</span><span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;"> October, 2019</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Paul Nnodim & Katherine Duval</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Closing the Gap on College Accessibility:</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Do Racial, Gender, and Socioeconomic Identities Still Matter? </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Tessa Sestito<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Do you Love Meat? </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Brett Belcastro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px; text-indent: 0in;"><i>Games, Ideology, and Détournement</i></span></div>
</div>
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<i style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Megan Walsh</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Once Upon a Theory of Time at the DMV </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Justin Therrien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Incrementalism of Abolitionism </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">T. J. Karis<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Freedom Isn't Free </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: 0in;"> </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Closing the Gap on College Accessibility:</span></b><br />
<br />
<b><b><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Do Gender, Racial, and Socioeconomic Identities Still
Matter?</span></b></b></div>
<b></b><br />
<b>
</b>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Paul Nnodim,
Ph.D. & Katherine Duval</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Summary:</span></b><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> This paper adopts a Rawlsian theoretical framework to
investigate how group membership shapes the experiences of three demographics
previously barred from higher education on a systemic level: women, people of
color, and people without significant or adequate material means. Rawls’s idea of justice would allow the
government to extend college access to underprivileged or underrepresented
groups proactively, even if doing so constitutes a minimal degree of “inequity”
towards specific demographics. The paper
leverages the results of recent studies on diversity and equity in higher
education to proffer solutions to recurrent problems in the area of college
accessibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Group membership, which affects individuals’
identities to varying degrees, influences disproportionately a person’s higher
education prospects. When examined under a Rawlsian system of justice, this
inequality seems arbitrary. In </span><i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">A Theory of Justice</span></i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> (1971), the late Harvard
professor, John Rawls, redefines society as a system of social cooperation, where
equal, cooperating members or citizens share the burdens and benefits arising
from the system. To arrive at such formal equality, Rawls revives the social
contract theory albeit with a phenomenological undercurrent. Members of society
would choose representatives who must immerse themselves in a hypothetical state or original position.
In this state, the representatives put on the “veil of ignorance,” which induces
in them something akin to temporary,
dissociative amnesia. Suddenly, they have no
clue about their particular situations. They no longer know their
political affiliations, economic interests, race, gender and sexual
orientation, position in society, religion, talents, psychological dispositions,
and so forth. However, the representatives in
the original position still have access to one significant information: they represent
diverse interest groups in a functioning democratic society (e.g., The United States) and are in the
original position to choose the principles of justice for their society. Rawls
thinks that in this “original position” of equality, these representatives
would only choose principles of justice that further their rational interest
because no one knows how he or she would fare in real life. The veil of
ignorance and its bracketing effects ensure that the representatives adopt an unadventurous approach towards risk and thus
choose principles that allow the least undesirable conditions for the worst-off
members of society. Rawls (1996) calls principles chosen in this hypothetically
strict condition of equality the “two principles of justice as fairness:”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">a. Each
person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">basic rights and
liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this
scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be
guaranteed their fair value.</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">b. Social and economic
inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to
positions</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> of
offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and second,
they are to be to the greatest benefits of the
least advantaged members of society. (Rawls, 1996, p. 5-6)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">The first principle of justice guarantees
an equal amount of liberty for all, while
the second principle has two sections. The first section is referred to as the
“fair equality of opportunity” principle, while the second section is known as
the “difference principle.” Among the second principles of justice, “fair
equality of opportunity” has priority over the “difference principle.” The fair
equality of opportunity principle regulates political offices and job openings
among other things. It ensures that all positions are accessible to all
citizens. Furthermore, it authorizes the government to make sure that employers or administrators of
tertiary institutions meet the requirements of fairness and equality when
advertising job openings or admission offerings. In relation to college access, these two principles of justice
imply that not only must each person have fair opportunity to receive higher
education, regardless of social identity, but also that the institutions
themselves create conditions for the attainment of diversity and equality.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">For women, students of color, and
students from lower socio-economic status, boundaries to opportunity are real-life phenomena. Although it is worth noting that women have made tremendous progress in
not only adapting to the university
culture, but excelling in that setting despite historical trends in America that discouraged women from dedicating
themselves to academia. Men are steadily becoming a minority on college
campuses around the country, with the U.S. Department of Education estimating that 57% of college students will be
women by 2026 (Marcus, 2017). Nevertheless,
recent statistics reveal that 20-25% of people of all gender identities, but
particularly women and gender non-conforming students, remain victims of sexual
assault on campuses (Mellins et al., 2017).
It is imperative for colleges to ensure
that all aspects of the college experience, and indeed all resources at their disposal, are equally
accessible to students regardless of gender.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">As regards</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"> racial parity at institutions of higher learning, a lot
more work still needs to be done. Although the
enrollment gap between the races is closing, nonetheless, Asian and white
students graduate and complete their programs and earn degrees at similar rates
(62 percent and 63.2 percent respectively), while Hispanic students and black
students graduate and complete degrees at rates of 45.8 percent and 38 percent,
respectively (Tate, 2017). It is unsettling
that less than half the population of students of color, on average, complete higher education programs. The effects
of recruitment campaigns have little impact
if retention rates across demographics are abysmal. Aside from the ethical consideration
for inclusiveness and broadening opportunities
in American education, racial diversity on college campuses contributes to the broader educational environment because meeting
and empathizing with people of different
backgrounds is an integral part of
learning about our shared world. For students of color, representation and
inclusion in the campus community are
crucial to academic success. Colleges and
universities should intensify efforts at recruiting faculty and staff of color
and other minorities to represent the percentage of their student bodies that
are of minority backgrounds.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Rawls’
notions of equality are also relevant to socio-economic
status (SES), which can affect students’ educational
paths. According to a CNBC article by Emmie Martin, students attending a public
university during the 2017-2018 school year on average pay tuition that has
increased by 213% since the 1987-1988 school year. In private institutions,
students on average have seen a 129% increase in tuition costs. Collectively,
American students are facing 1.4 trillion
dollars in student loan debt, the only type of debt that cannot be forgiven (Martin, 2017). For many students
today, the decision to continue with higher education hinges on the question of whether or not the economic
benefits of a degree will offset the debt of student loan. Although the rising costs of
tuition are now affecting most Americans,
the economics of college has always been an issue for students from the bottom
of the socioeconomic ladder.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif;">Low SES students often enroll in
less-selective institutions with fewer financial
resources. This implies that students who are already economically
disadvantaged are more likely to attend a school which will have a limited
ability to help them meet their financial needs. The most selective
institutions must make efforts to balance
access for students from different economic backgrounds. A type of affirmative
action for low SES students may help to increase admittance of these students. Such a policy shift would require prestigious,
private universities to commit sincerely to creating greater economic equality
in the enrollment process. These schools
must make an effort to admit students from working and middle-class
backgrounds, even if doing so requires the more affluent to pay a little more
money in tuition or taxes. As Rawls’s difference principle warrants, tolerating
some “inequality” may be necessary, if the much talked about social mobility in
America is to be realized. As diversity engenders both opportunities and
challenges across college campuses in
America, cultural and economic identities remain
at the front and center of the debate.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Goldin, C., Katz, L. F., &
Kuziemko, I. (2006). The Homecoming of <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">American College
Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap.</span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> <i>Journal of
Economic<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Perspectives, American Economic Association</span></i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">. 20(4), 133-156. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marcus, Jon. (2017). Why Men Are
the New College Minority. <i>The Atlantic,
Atlantic Media<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Company. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Martin, E. (2017). Here’s
How Much More Expensive It Is For You to Go to College than It Was for Your Parents. <i>CNBC</i>. <i>COM</i>. Retrieved from
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has-increased-from-1988-to-2018.html<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Mellins, C. A. et al. (2017). Sexual Assault Incidents Among
College Undergraduates: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Prevalence and Factors Associated
with Risk. <i>PLOS ONE</i>. 2(11), 1-23.
Retrieved from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186471
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Rawls, J. (2001)<i>. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement</i>. Ed.
Kelly, E. Cambridge, MA: Harvard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">University Press. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Rawls, J. (1996). <i>Political Liberalism</i>. New York: Columbia
University Press. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Rawls, J. (1971). <i>A Theory
of Justice</i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tate, E. (2017). Graduation Rates and Race. <i>Inside Higher Ed</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; text-align: center; text-indent: -0.25in;">Paul Nnodim, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at MCLA; </span></span><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: center; text-indent: -0.25in;">Katherine Duval is a recent MCLA graduate in English/Communications and Philosophy.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Do You Love Meat?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Tessa Sestito<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t you love hamburgers?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A nice, medium-rare steak?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps a chilled glass of milk?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A girl matures,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">forced into submission;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Poked and prodded,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">chained and exploited,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">until her body can give no more to her “farmer.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A boy ages,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">dismembered for packaging.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It wasn’t quick,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nor “humane;”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the poorly trained “farmer” misses, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">causing the boy to writhe in agony and suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Do you crave nuggets with dipping sauce?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Or delectable hot wings?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe a crispy eight-piece meal?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dark and cramped,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with an overpowering odor of suffering<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">hanging in the air.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At his battered, feeble feet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">his fellow passengers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">some with broken wings or legs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">others stiff from terminal hemorrhaging, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">through the unintentional holes in the crate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He miraculously reaches the destination<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to find a horrendous nightmare awaiting him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The bodies around him are harvested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shackled upside-down,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with a newly broken foot curtesy of a “farmer”,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he struggles,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">vomiting and defecating in fear.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Violent screams and frenzied flapping <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">fall on deaf ears.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Still conscious,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a new “farmer” approaches with a thin blade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He strikes effortlessly, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">slicing the throats of several victims,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">still conscious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I won’t begin to cover<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">your crispy bacon,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or “free-range” turkey burgers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">because you won’t be able to sleep for days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s time to change this suffering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To bring justice to such horrendous treatment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We have the choice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I chose to follow my moral obligations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and protest the meat industry many of us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">contribute to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How would you feel if you were caged,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">exploited,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">slaughtered maliciously?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What if your child<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was killed for someone else’s dinner?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Do I love meat?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes, when it is still attached to the animal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and untouched by humans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Tessa Sestito is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></i>
____________________________</div>
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<b><span class="TextRun SCXW105195556 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times new roman_msfontservice" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 44px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW105195556 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Games, Ideology, and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCXW105195556 BCX0" data-contrast="auto" lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times new roman_msfontservice" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 44px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" xml:lang="EN"><span class="SpellingError SCXW105195556 BCX0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-drag: none; background-color: inherit; background-image: url("data:image/gif; background-position: left bottom; background-repeat: repeat-x; border-bottom: 1px solid transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: text;">Détournement</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Brett Belcastro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Guy Debord observes a political and
economic system that he names “the spectacle.” For Debord, The spectacle
represents an advanced stage of capitalism which operates so automatically, at
such a level of ideological and productive efficiency, that it achieves
independence from the class that created it. The spectacle acts for itself,
advances its own interests, and forms a totalizing political force that masks
the possibility of political change by absorbing and repurposing a society’s
entire media output to its own ends (1).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">For Debord, the spectacle lives not
just in the hours that workers expend on labor, but in the hours that they
escape labor through entertainment (2). He writes extensively about new mediums
of entertainment, and the emergence and market dominance of alternative digital
worlds would not seem peculiar to Debord, who predicts it as a matter of
course, as the “separation and reunification as separate” (3) of alienated
workers who seek to escape their work and rediscover the lost community of
their former world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">What Debord might not have foreseen
is the importance of play to these new escapes, or that we would experience
them specifically as games. Debord writes primarily from the 1960s, an era
defined by the mass adoption of television throughout Europe, and while he is
directly concerned with leisure, his theory primarily reflects the ideological
and spectacular function of the passive television screen. But in the 21st
century, the passive consumer appears to have become the active player in a
narrative of their own choosing. Where Debord decries the passivity of all the
information exchanged through screens as a Lacanian “mirror stage,”
infantilizing its audience (4), decades of digital play seem to have revived
the agency that one-way screens managed to erase.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Debord applies a dialectical
approach to demonstrate that the appearance of this consumer transformation
suppresses, but also actually contains, the power to create a political
subject, capable of a historical consciousness. Dialectical approaches
emphasize the conflicts and negations that determine a thing’s essence,
treating the sides of each conflict as a unity of opposites within the whole
essence. While one side of the conflict will dominate at any given time, the
entertainment mediums that Debord writes about contain the ability to both
suppress and express political possibility, depending on which side of the
conflict is strongest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Contemporary video games are no
exception, and benefit from this dialectical approach. The video game both
promises and mostly suppresses the subjectivization of its players. Unlike a
film, which forms a diegetic world independent of the viewer that will continue
to play even if the audience leaves the theater, few digital worlds exist
beyond the player’s impact on them, responding to the player’s actions but also
demanding and requiring player activity. Indeed, the worlds presented by most
games are actually tightly-scripted corridors that appear wide open and
continuous but are carefully limited in ways expressly hidden from the player:
if the player somehow exceeds the bounds prescribed by the developer, they will
not find a new route, new characters, or new story, but an empty void,
producing a direct contradiction between the freedom which games demand and the
constraints that they require to function. This is the very image of the
consumer society as it currently exists: promise the consumer a narrative life,
demand that they make meaningful choices, but tightly control them within
impassable bounds, and hide this control from them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Debord, observing the emergence of
these conflicts within the cinema of his time, threw himself into the conflict
and attempted to grasp the contradiction between its powers of ideological
suppression and its ability to meaningfully portray collective action. He
directed and held speaking roles in a number of <i>avant-garde</i> films (5) designed
to break the logic of the spectacle, forcing the audience into conflict with
the screen and arousing their subjectivity. The practical political method of
the Situationist movement that he helped to develop was détournement, to
highlight the material conditions that produce ideological suppression by
diverting or hacking the existing content of the ubiquitous spectacular media,
overpowering and revealing the suppression at its core (6).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14.85px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Likewise, any game that attempts to
educate the political subjectivity of its players should grasp and portray its
specific contradictions. What this means in practice is to draw attention to
the conflict between restraint and freedom and, wherever possible, to allow the
player to alter or at least criticize the very conditions that make this
conflict necessary. By criticizing and détourning these ideological
productions, players achieve a historical consciousness, and take the first
steps in overcoming alienation and developing political agency.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sources</span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(1)
Debord, Guy. <i>Society of the Spectacle. </i>3rd
Ed. Translated & Pub. Black & Red 1977, Detroit, MI. Thesis 16.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(2) <i>Ibid. </i>Thesis 65.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(3) <i>Ibid. </i>Thesis 29.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(4) <i>Ibid. </i>Thesis 218.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">(5)
Debord, Guy. <i>La Société du Spectacle</i>.
URL: <span class="ListLabel1"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoUIHBSiVAY"><span style="color: #1155cc;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoUIHBSiVAY</span></a></span>.
Accessed September 6, 2019.</span><span lang="EN"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(6)
Debord, Guy, & Wolman, Gil J, “A User’s Guide to Détournement.” <i>Situationist International Online. </i>URL:
https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/usersguide.html.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Brett Belcastro is an alumnus of MCLA currently living in Western MA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
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_____________________________</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Once Upon a Theory of Time at the DMV<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Megan Walsh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “Hey there,
Franklin! How long have you been here?”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “Oh, an eternity
I think… I got here around ten and time has been crawling by every since”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “So you’re saying
time has been moving slower for you than for others since you’ve arrived?”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">F</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">ranklin: “Not this
again...”</span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “You’re the one
who said it”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “It’s an
expression, Rich. You know I don’t go for that B-Theory hoopla. It’s the
called the B theory for a reason - its second rate.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “Well than explain
to me how you account for the need for expressions like that. Our commonsense
view of the world posits meaningful cognitions to show us the reality of all
points in time. We have memories of the past and can predict with high accuracy
events in the future. How else do you explain that?”<br /><br />
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “You shouldn’t talk about our commonsense view of the world given
your ideas. Still there are many ways to explain. The spotlight and Growing Block
A-theorists might grant you that there is <i>some </i>reality to things outside
the present. The growing block theorist would say that, while there is no real,
existing future, things in the past do have some objective properties.
Spotlight theorists would go even further and accept a certain reality for both
the past and the future, though they will both be lacking the special state of
the illuminated present. But for me it’s even easier; there is nothing other
than the present. Those memories you mention are a current feature of your mind
as it exists in the present. To remember your breakfast this morning is to
create a thought from concepts that currently exist in your mind. It can’t be
said that a bagel exists when you remember a bagel. When we misremember
something differently than how it was, as we often do, it clearly cannot be
used as proof of the reality of a past which it doesn’t even represent with any
accuracy. So why should other memories? For the future, there is nothing we can
point to within our conceptions that have any realness whatsoever. Events and
objects in the future have yet to happen and therefore have no properties of shape,
color, mass, or anything else that might make something real. And if the entire
state of the future is made up of things which don’t currently exist, the state
itself can’t be said to exist, as it contains nothing.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “That’s true; neither one of us subscribes very closely to a common sense view, but perhaps
that’s just an indication that we aren’t common people. I’ve always liked to
think we belong to a rare breed. Either way your defense is hardly a good one.
What is this special illuminating quality composed of for the Spotlight
theorist? And how is the present meaningfully distinguished from the past? For the growing block theory as well, there seems to be nothing in the explanation of
the instances that accounts for how significant the change from present to past
seems to be for objects and events in our lives, yet you clearly feel very
differently about presently being at the DMV than talking about it in the
distant past.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “That’s because
there are significant changes that occur when moving from the present to the
past. An object’s spatial and intrinsic properties are only present for the
object when it is in the present. The pen you are holding, for instance,
occupies a location in space right now and certain properties which make it a pen;
it’s mass, color, ability to write, etc. When it moves into the past, though, it
loses these properties so of course we should feel differently about it.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “Then how can you
maintain that objects and events still exist in any sense if they are to be
stripped of their most defining and fundamental characteristics? How can you
say a pen which no longer occupies a location in space, nor any physical
features, not even the properties which constitute “pen-ness,” like the ability
to write, is real or existent?”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “I don’t. Some
other A-Theorists may, but my answer to this problem is simple: they don’t
exist. Nothing exists outside of the present.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “That’s a handy
way of sidestepping the issue isn’t it? Very well then, let’s examine that view
more closely. If nothing outside of the present exists, how can you reasonably
explain a true event in the past for which there does not currently exist any
evidence? How, for example, could you prove that a caveman, who really lived in
a certain place long ago, but didn’t leave any trace which we can point to in
the world today, was real, if you are committed to saying that there is nothing
besides what we have around us now? It <i>is </i>true, yet there’s nothing you
can point to that makes it necessarily the case.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “Ah, but there
are existing things today which make it necessarily the case. Objects have real
properties of the past within them. If a caveman sat on a boulder then that
boulder today has the backwards-facing property of <i>having been sat on by the
caveman.</i>”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “I don’t see how
you can call it a real property when there is nothing concrete about it. What
are these backwards-facing properties composed of, and how might we test their
presence within a given object? What’s the difference between the object
<i>really </i>having a true backwards-facing property versus a made up
backwards-facing property, like if I decided to attribute the property of
having been sat on by a unicorn? If it doesn't change the object itself in any
measurable way, how can we say it is a real property belonging to the object
itself?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “Richard, some
things can’t be boiled down any further. How can you ask why an object has the
properties it does or ask me to prove it? There is no further explanation
besides the descriptive observation that it is one of the fundamental pieces
that make up that particular object.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “Alright I see we
must leave that point at a dissatisfied rest. I must say, I’m still very
unpersuaded by your arguments, and I haven’t even gotten into the problems that arise when judged against our scientific understanding of Einstein's theory of
relativity, which is one of our biggest points of disagreement.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “Well go ahead
then, what’s your view?”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “It’s based in
Einstein's finding that time can move at different rates relative to one’s own
motion. If I move faster, time for me goes slower. This was measured
objectively with two identical clocks, set to different tracks of motion which
were shown to have experienced time in a measurably different way. So, if we
know that time for me could be moving at a different pace than it is for you,
we must say that my conception of what “now” is may be different as well.
Since my version of now and your version of now are equally valid, we also must
say that every point in time is equally real, as each point could fill the roll
of “now” for someone or something moving at a different pace than us. There is
no one thing which we can call <i>the </i>present, or, for that matter, <i>the </i>past
or future. These sorts of concrete distinctions don’t accurately resemble the
topology of time.”<br /><br />
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “Okay, so if you posit all time as equally real and states of past,
present, and future as non-objective, how can you distinguish between objects
and events around us now and those which were here years ago? How do you talk
about the past at all?”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “Relationally.
Clearly there is a difference between a cookie in my hand and a cookie which
has been eaten. I only debate you on the shape of that difference; that it is
not an objective property of the cookie, only an indication of where that
cookie stands in relation to other objects and events. It does not make sense
to say the cookie is ‘in the past’, but it makes perfect sense to say that the
cookie in my hand was <i>before </i>the eaten cookie. There is still a sequence
of events in a certain order.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “We may not see
eye to eye on everything, but I’m not sure I’m willing to accept that our
fundamental perception of the world is so radically different that we aren't
even living in the same time. How can you claim such a thing when our very
civilization rests on the synchronization of our experiences? How do you
suppose we hold a conversation, if time is going at a significantly different
pace for me than for you? Surely one of us would lose their place or become
bored waiting for the other’s reply.”<br /><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “I never made any mention of <i>how </i>different one's relative pace
may be from another’s. Looking around our everyday lives, I’ll admit that
B-Theory seems intuitively false. However, this is only because the
discrepancies between our experiences of time are so infinitesimal for the
speeds of motion we can achieve. We may not be able to pick up on the
differences, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Franklin: “I’m still not
convinced. When I hear the sound of hoof beats I think horse, not zebra, and
when I experience time as so seemingly real and objective, I have to believe it
is so. Commonsense urges me too, and until I have indisputable proof, I must
standby such urges.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="border: none 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; padding: 0in;">Richard: “Very well. I’ve
just been called up. Enjoy the remainder of your eternity”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">References</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">“Hafele–Keating Experiment - Two Atomic Clocks
Flew Twice around the World, Eastward and Westward. Back at Home, They Each
Showed Different Times.” The Vintage News, 15 Sept. 2016,<a href="http://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/16/hafele-keating-experiment-two-atomic-clocks-flew-twice-around-world-eastward-westward-back-home-showed-different-times/" target="_blank">www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/16/hafele-keating-experiment-two-atomic-clocks-flew-twice-around-world-eastward-westward-back-home-showed-different-times/</a>.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Privileged Present: Defending an
‘A-Theory’ of Time. fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/zimmerman/privilegedpresent.pdf.</span><span style="font-size: 14.85px;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Megan Walsh is a student at MCLA</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">The Incrementalism of Abolitionism<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Justin Therrien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In environmental policy today, most
advocates for climate change laws demand immediate change. They prefer the
abolitionist approach of having the changes and implementations happen <i>right
here, right now</i>. Others take a different, incrementalist
approach which focuses on gradual steps. Neither must have a
different final goal; they may simply have different views on what is the most
efficient and realistic method of advancing that goal. The view I defend here is that</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> abolitionism is the more efficient method of the two for environmental policy and one, moreover, that ought to satisfy both incrementalists and abolitionists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Incrementalism’s logic rests on the idea
that it is unrealistic to assume that public policy can be implemented in a
sweeping change; that, in essence, we will spend too much time debating
and editing the bigger plan when it would be more realistic to implement
smaller steps that society could more easily take. However, incrementalism
leaves out a crucial factor: the order in which policies should be implemented. The
incrementalist approach specifies a number of steps to the larger goal, but can be silent on how to go about choosing or prioritizing those steps. In the event that a first step is
considered too harsh or simply voted down, for example, we have lost valuable time in moving toward our eventual goal. These missteps may prove very dangerous, especially in light of recent scientific evidence that we have but 11 years to make significant progress towards our ecological goals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What is often overlooked is the incremental nature of abolitionist approaches to change. Consider the example of the abolition of slavery in Great Britain in the early to mid-1800s. Two acts were passed; one
in 1807 ending slavery in Great Britain, and one in 1834 ending slavery in the
British colonies in the Carribean (although ignored by some). Two intense acts of abolition in no way marked the end to the slave trade as it
dwindled throughout the nineteenth century (Shapiro). The incrementalism is apparent in the need to continue the process of eradicating slavery. Following the two acts, many people still
illegally traded slaves, while certain colonies simply ignored the order. Over time, the
British were able to bring these to light and completely eradicate the slave
trade by the time their colonies achieved independence. In the background,
Britain also slowly stopped buying products that used
slave-labor (Shapiro). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It follows that abolitionism in environmental policy will also leave room for incremental change. As with the slave
trade, the government will need to continue to investigate businesses and
individuals trying to dodge the laws. However, the regulations would still have
a greater and more efficient effect than if smaller steps were taken. Morally
speaking, abolitionism also promotes a more acceptable approach it does not
continue to commit or promote immoral acts (Francione). Abolitionism is clear in its
goals and can more easily garner popular support, which in turn makes the process more efficient. To bridge the gap
between the two approaches, legislators need to be aware that they are in practice more similar than is typically acknowledged. In the end, what will
likely bridge the gap is the realization that an abolitionist policy can be
enforced, militating against many inclinations to break the law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">References<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Levmore,
Saul. “Interest Groups and the Problem with Incrementalism.” <i>SSRN Electronic
Journal</i>, 2010, doi:10.2139/ssrn.1513610.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Shapiro, Stephan.
“After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 | Origins: Current
Events in Historical Perspective.” <i>Origins</i>, The Ohio State
University, College of Arts and Sciences, 2019, origins.osu.edu/review/after-abolition-britain-and-slave-trade-1807.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Francione,
Gary L. “Peter Singer: ‘Oh My God, These Vegans…’ .” <i>Animal Rights The
Abolitionist Approach</i>, Animal Rights The Abolitionist Approach, 21 Sept.
2015, </span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/peter-singer-oh-my-god-these-vegans/">www.abolitionistapproach.com/peter-singer-oh-my-god-these-vegans/</a></span></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span></div>
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<i style="font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">Justin Therrien is an alumnus of MCLA</span></i><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Freedom Isn't Free<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">T. J. Karis</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Freedom” is a surprisingly challenging
word to define. In the “land of the free, home of the brave”, it should be
impossible for anyone to misunderstand the term. Yet liberty is a far more
elusive concept than it first appears, even for Americans. Freedom is, after
all, a small word with a very big meaning, and that meaning is not always
consistent between two given persons. The quintessential and most pervasive
definition of freedom, although not always articulated in such detail, is “the
ability to do as one pleases, unconstrained by internal or external influence,
to the extent that it does not interfere with the freedom of others”. Here I
will argue that freedom also requires certain things to maintain itself and maybe
even to exist at all, both of the free individual and of the social structures
within which the individual exists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To say that freedom requires something
more than the absence of constraints, internal or external, is first and
foremost to cite the necessity of both positive and negative liberty. As the
two are explained in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">In a famous essay first published in 1958, Isaiah
Berlin called these two concepts of liberty negative and positive respectively.
The reason for using these labels is that in the first case liberty seems to be
a mere <i>absence</i> of something (i.e. of obstacles, barriers, constraints or
interference from others), whereas in the second case it seems to require the <i>presence</i>
of something (i.e. of control, self-mastery, self-determination or
self-realization). In Berlin's words, we use the negative concept of liberty in
attempting to answer the question “What is the area within which the subject —
a person or group of persons — is or should be left to do or be what he is able
to do or be, without interference by other persons?”, whereas we use the
positive concept in attempting to answer the question “What, or who, is the
source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this
rather than that?” (Carter)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Clearly, both positive and negative
liberty are necessary for a person to be free. Where the usual definition that I
provided in my introduction is focused solely on negative liberty, the
remainder of this essay will focus on certain positive liberties that are
crucial to real freedom. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">First, as Richard Schmitt noted in his
essay <i>Socialist Freedom</i>, one’s
desires must be under the control of one’s rational faculties. Bad influences
need not come from outside, he explains: “A drunkard, on the other hand, also
does what he wants but is not free because he cannot stop drinking. Wishes are
often conflicted; one satisfies them but would prefer to resist them. Being
unable to resist, one acts on these desires; one is not free but rather
subservient to desires that will not be refused” (56). So, what one pleases
must not be harmful to that same person. One must know precisely whatever it is
that one truly wants, which is often complicated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Further still, t</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">o be authentically free, one
must not only seek one’s true desires but also be a seeker of the truth; without
a relentless pursuit of objective fact, one will be swayed too easily by
falsehoods and ultimately led astray. If one does not perpetually seek a more precise
understanding of reality, how could one ever hope to be free? A laissez-faire
attitude towards knowledge can only lead to enslavement by the fashions of the
day, without ever bothering to question why things are the way they are. As a
result, one would not be able to make meaningful changes when necessary – or
for that matter, even realize that changes might be necessary in the first
place. Additionally, once one’s beliefs have been set in stone, a lack of
concern for the truth would make these beliefs unlikely to change, even if they
are later proven to be founded upon inaccurate premises. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">The truth seeker must then be willing to change
his or her mind in light of superior reason. Without this willingness to accept
one’s own errors and correct one’s beliefs to reflect the highest possible
levels of knowledge and reason, one becomes imprisoned by habits which are only
reinforced further over time. One thus loses the capacity to question one’s own
ideologies and morality. This leads to enslavement of the free-thinking mind by
itself, which can only end in self-destruction. So well-known is this fact that
it has become a cliché of sorts, taking many different forms. David Foster
Wallace, for example, in his infamous “This is Water” speech to the 2005
graduating class of Kenyon College, noted that “the mind is a great servant, but
a terrible master”. Once we have lost control of our ability to escape
preconceptions and convictions that no longer serve us or have been proven
untenable, we have lost a critical freedom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Yet this does not mean that we should be
willing to give up our long-held ideas and ideals too easily. We must know who
we are and what we believe, and maintain these identities firmly – so long as
we understand why we believe what we do. Although entrapment in erroneous
conviction is dangerous, it is equally perilous to remain indifferent and
passive, allowing the most popular opinions of the day to supplant our own.
Perhaps this is best explained by another cliché: “If you don’t stand for
something, you’ll fall for anything”. In other words, a strong sense of
identity is not just important in relation to truth-seeking, but also because
it keeps one from absentminded conformity. Schmitt addressed this, as well:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Conformists whose identities are
not clearly delineated are inclined to be passive, without firm opinions or
values, incapable of useful thinking, corruptible, full of distrust for self
and other, lonely, and willing to do almost anything to assuage that
loneliness. Due to these incapacities they allow the media, opinion makers,
experts, the majority to shape their opinions for them because they have
difficulties thinking for themselves. Being easily swayed by threats, they
allow their employers or the government to determine their actions. By and by,
they surrender their actual freedom. As a consequence, the word “freedom” means
no more to them than that; if they did want to show some independence of
thought or actions, no one would stand in their way. Then freedom comes to mean
no more than freedom of choice, just in case one ever was inclined to make any
independent choices. That is Berlin’s conception of freedom; the freedom of the
conformists, of persons with indistinct and poorly developed self-identities.
This freedom of choice, in one of its most bizarre permutations, degenerates
into the consumer’s freedom to choose between many different brands of
toothpaste. But freedom that is no more than freedom of choice is – using the
language of de Tocqueville and, earlier, of Rousseau – the freedom of slaves
(63).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Whether from a lack of concern about the truth,
or want of a clear identity, conformism is dangerous at best and lethal at
worst. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for anybody to argue that one
can be a free conformist. It is a contradiction in terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Some may now be starting to wonder: what if
there is no such thing as free will at all? Why struggle for freedom if our
very lives are already pre-programmed from the beginning? Of course, any
discussion of the meaning of freedom is inherently a rejection of determinism.
As William James once noted someplace: if you don’t believe in free will, why
bother presenting an argument? Freedom of the will is sometimes referred to as
a ‘necessary fiction’ – and while no one can ever really be certain whether it
is fictitious, for this paper I will assume that it is not. Persons obstinately
convinced of predetermination should not bother to continue reading this essay.
(Unless that is their destiny, of course.) Although I am sure that many compelling
arguments could be made on either side, this is simply not the place for such a
debate. It is not in the cards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Others still, having accepted the notion of
free will, may wish to argue that freedom does not require any social structure
whatsoever, or even that in fact the absence of social structure is a
prerequisite of true freedom. On a very superficial level, it seems almost
axiomatic that any social institution, which are controlling by their very
nature, would preclude freedom. Yet without some degree of structure, there can
be no society. In fact, social structures, taken collectively, are what define
the word “society”. However ideal it may appear at first, (and certainly it
seems an appealing concept when one is being repressed by an institution – or
even while stuck in line at the RMV), a large human collective without any
organizational structure or institutions, i.e. a “state” of some sort, will
invariably collapse. Before long, power will be taken by brute force by
whomever is quickest and harshest. This is such a simple train of logic that I
will not bother to endeavor explaining this any further. Let us agree for now
that freedom will require a society with some degree of government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Nonetheless, this government need not be
authoritarian and strict – nor need it hold much power over the governed. In
fact, I would argue that for freedom to flourish, the governed and government
ought to be one and the same, to the greatest degree practicable. Freedom demands
that the social structures which the individual exists within be organized horizontally.
Power corrupts; power must be divided equally and balanced carefully and should
only exist at all where it absolutely must. And regardless of how well power is
balanced and freedom is promoted, every citizen is no less obligated to test
the limits of their freedom regularly, in speech and in action. Otherwise
liberty will rapidly and naturally decay. Says Schmitt,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Freedom requires of us that we not only have
the ability to choose but that we <i>make</i>
choices. We must defend freedom of speech by speaking, and freedom of thought
by thinking. The first defense of democracy is the exercise of one’s democratic
rights and that means to participate as fully as one can in the public
discussions about policy, in the governance of one’s workplace, one’s
neighborhood, city, state, and nation (64).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Through active
participation, it is far less likely that freedom will be furtively dismantled
by the unscrupulous and power-hungry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lastly, taking the
wider view, we cannot help but conclude that in any society which concerns
itself with freedom, everyone must be free in order for anyone to be free. This
is made clear even from the most ordinary definitions of freedom. Take, for
example, the simplistic definition provided by John Stuart Mill, “The only
freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own
way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs.” By attempting
to deprive another of their liberty, we lose that freedom “which deserves the
name”. Slave owners in fear of slave revolt were just as enslaved as those they
oppressed. Oppressors oppress themselves, too. Freedom only for some, by
definition, means freedom for none. And thus the existence of freedom entails a
never-ending fight for it – for ourselves, and for everybody else, too.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">R</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">eferences<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Carter, Ian, "Positive and Negative Liberty", The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<https: archives="" entries="" liberty-positive-negative="" plato.stanford.edu="" sum2018="">.<o:p></o:p></https:></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Schmitt, Richard. "Socialist Freedom." Toward a
New Socialism, edited by Anatole Anton and Richard Schmitt, Lexington Books,
2007, pp. 53-74.</span><span style="font-size: 14.85px;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">T. J. Karis is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></i>_____________________________</div>
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David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-82744127322309546902018-01-30T10:45:00.000-05:002018-03-23T16:38:58.492-04:00Issue 24.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 align="center" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0in; position: relative; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "castellar" , serif;">THESIS XII</span></i></h1>
<h1 align="center" style="background-color: white; border: none; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0in; position: relative; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "mistral"; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;">Volume 24 • Number 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12pt;">Ó</span><span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;"> February, 2018</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">INSIDE
THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Falyn
Elhard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A Promising Argument </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Allison Gregory<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Sex as Social Construct </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Nicole K. Braden-Johnson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Live or Let Die<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt;">A Response to Jeff McMahan’s <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11pt;">“Eating Animals the Nice Way”</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Keaton Shoults<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Value of Multiculturalism </span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">August Stowers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Origin of Moral Truth </span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Michael McAndrew<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Closing the Gap Between
Deontological and <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Teleological Theories of Ethics </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">David K. Braden-Johnson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Eleven Theses on Realism</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Paul Nnodim</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Kant's Transcendental Idealism and the Crisis of Metaphysics </i> </span></div>
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_____________________________</div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">A Promising
Argument<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Falyn Elhard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I do not
believe that it is possible to derive a substantive and normative conclusion
from non-substantive and non-normative premises; in other words, I do not
believe that the is/ought gap is bridgeable. Science, or empirical data, is
grounded in observation of how the world <i>is</i>.
Ethics, or morality, is grounded in intuition about how the world <i>ought</i> to be. A conclusion about how the
world is does not, and cannot follow, from a statement about how the world
ought to be. Anyone who attempts to bridge the is/ought gap fails to see the
role that their own subjectivity is playing within their argument, and thus is
failing to remain an objective and critical thinker. Some argue that debating
the semantics of the is/ought dilemma detracts from being able to address
certain moral issues, but I do not think that this is necessarily so. If the
gap between morality and fact is closed, and we allow people to posit their
subjective worldviews as the way in which the world should and does function
for everyone else, then that opens the door for bias and bigotry to take root.
Opinion should not be stated as fact.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Whenever
one attempts to bridge the is/ought gap, they are making an implicit assumption
that they hold a worldview that is shared and validated by others outside of
themselves, and then proceeding from there to make a conclusion based on that
assumption. If normativity is assumed in the premises, and valid arguments must
have a conclusion that follow their premises, then any ‘valid’ argument
attempting to bridge the is/ought gap will have a normative conclusion
following from normative premises. Thus, the gap is not bridged, because there
is no non-normative content in the conclusion to bridge the inherent
normativity of the premises to; all of the content is normative.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
majority of the arguments that I have seen which attempt to bridge the is/ought
gap seek to do so through proving that <i>is</i>
can be derived from <i>ought</i>. However,
some argue that it is <i>ought</i> that can
be derived from <i>is</i>. For example, in
his publication <i>How to Derive “Ought”
From “Is”</i>, John R. Searle posits that, through the nature of promising, it
is possible to originate categorical ‘ought’ conclusions that follow from ‘is’
premises. This conclusion is arrived at by citing empirically validated quotes
in the third person, such as “Person <i>A</i>
said, ‘I promise to do X as is within my means for Person <i>B.’ </i>”<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This
argument refutes nothing that I have stated previously. In this case, Searle is
making a normative assumption about the nature of promising, such as that when
one <i>says</i> that they will do something,
one <i>ought to</i> do that thing. This is
predicated upon the morally based understanding of truth and honesty. It is not
a proven empirical fact that we should be truthful in what we say to others and
how we interact with them, but rather a subjective moral assessment. As such,
the premises of his argument contain implicit normativity, and fails to bridge
the is/ought gap.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">All of
this is not to say that there can be no valid arguments from morality, or that
we cannot hold any valid moral worldviews. Empirical data can inform and help
to validate<i> </i>ethics, and vice versa;
but it is just not possible to go directly from empirical fact to moral truth
without some sort of substantive and/or normative inference being made.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">References<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Braden-Johnson,
D. K. (2016, May). The Problem with the Is-Ought Non-Problem. Thesis XII,
22(1).<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Miller,
H. B. (n.d.). Science, Ethics, and Moral Status. Retrieved from Paris Mountain:
</span><a href="http://parismount.blogspot.com/2012/03/copyright-1988-harlan-b.htm"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">http://parismount.blogspot.com/2012/03/copyright-1988-harlan-b.htm</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Searle,
J. R. (1964, January). How to Derive "Ought" From "Is". The
Philosophical Review, 73(1).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Silliman,
M. (2016, May). The Is-Ought Non-Problem. Thesis XII, 22(1).<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Falyn Elhard is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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</div>
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_____________________________</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Sex as Social
Construct<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Allison Gregory<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When
discussing expectations in society, each society seems to have different
expectations regarding appearance, gender expression, and how men and women are
treated. It is easy to tease apart how these aspects of life are socially
constructed by the popular viewpoint that has dominated throughout enough of
history to be determined the norm. Gender expression has to do with the
outwardly appearance of a person that aligns with how they identify. This does
not seem hard to recognize as a social construct. On the other hand, sex is
harder to consider a social construct. Although it is impossible to socially
construct the biological aspects of sex (e.g. chromosomes and genes), it may be
possible to construct the idea of a sex binary based on outward appearance and
the term ‘sex’ in general regarding nature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When
suggesting the concept of sex to be a social construction, people will
immediately argue that one cannot socially construct chromosomes. This is
entirely true; chromosomes have been proven, by science, to be in our genetics
and can help determine the types of hormones the body produces and how the
outward body may look. What is meant by the statement ‘the concept of sex is a
social construction’ deals more with the binary society has accepted. Society
accepts, generally, two sexes: male and female. As Sara C. writes, “even though
most people never get their chromosomes tested, we […] assume this sex
assignment to mean that people with penises always have XY chromosomes and
people with vulvas always have XX chromosomes” (1). The author points out the
problem with this social construction which seems to counter the assertion of
those who do not believe sex to be a social construct because chromosomes
cannot be a social construction. The problem with a sex binary is it leaves out
those who are intersex; those who can have various combinations of sex
chromosomes such as XXY, outward appearing women with XY chromosomes, outward
appearing men with XX chromosomes, etc. This leads to the problem of intersex
people not falling within the binary and, therefore, are ignored by society due
to the construct.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">With a
socially constructed sex binary, this allows for the perpetuation of a gender
binary as well. The concept of a gender binary would not be strong if society
did not suggest there are “‘sexes’ with a ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ or
‘hormonal’ or ‘genetic’ difference that has sociological consequences” (2).
This leads to the social conception that sex is a part of nature. In certain
respects, nature can be changed. Due to scientific advancements, what “nature”
created in the womb can be changed through gene therapy, hormone replacement
therapy, gender-affirming surgery, etc. As Alcoff writes, “what we set aside as 'nature' is in dialectical relation with 'culture' in so far as it is altered
by human practice and what we know about it is constantly altered as practices
evolve, or devolve” (3). We can see sex/gender in direct relation with
nature/culture since sex is often viewed as determined by nature at conception,
due to chromosomes and genes remaining constant even if the outward body
changes. Gender, on the other hand, is viewed as a part of culture since
different cultures view gender and gender roles differently than others. For
example, in some indigenous cultures, the men of a tribe will take over womanly
duties and become women if there are few women in the tribe. Of course, this
idea is very different from how many Western cultures perceive gender. This
furthers the idea that both sex and gender are equally socially constructed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The idea
of sex as a binary based on the link between chromosomes and outward appearance
and sex regarding nature seem to denote sex as a social construct. Sex is
harder to pin down as a social construct than gender due to the constant
rebuttal of how one cannot change chromosomes. Once a person begins to move
away from concrete biology dealing with genetics and towards how sex is
discussed and manipulated in society, one moves towards a better understanding
of the social construction of sex. By recognizing the variation found in sex
identity, it seems to consistently go against the societal construct of only
two sexes existing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">(1)
C, Sara. “The XX and XY Lie: Our Social Construction of a Sex and Gender
Binary.” <i>Medium</i>, Medium, 21 Oct. 2017,
medium.com/@QSE/the-xx-xy-lie-our-social-construction-of-a-sex-and-gender-binary-4eed1e60e615.
p. 12.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">(2)
Alcoff, Linda. “The Metaphysics of Gender and Sexual Difference.” <i>The
Metaphysics of Gender and Sexual Difference | Alcoff.com</i>,
www.alcoff.com/content/chap6metags.html. p. 15.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(3) Ibid,
p. 80.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Allison Gregory
is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
_____________________________</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Live or Let Die<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A Response to Jeff McMahan’s
“Eating Animals the Nice Way”<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nicole K.
Braden-Johnson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In “Eating Animals the Nice Way,”
Jeff McMahan argues clearly and rightly against the notion that meat consumption
would be morally justified by treating animals well up until the moment of
their death. To summarize his main argument: to cause the premature death of a
being capable of feeling pleasure is to deprive that being of future pleasures
he or she would have otherwise experienced; and depriving any being of such
pleasures is wrong. Therefore, even the most sudden and painless killing of an
unwilling participant is wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In the final pages of the article,
McMahan posits a hypothetical scenario in which it may be morally permissible
to raise and then eat non-human animals. He suggests that if we could
genetically modify pigs, for instance, to have a relatively short life-span
(two or three years), then it would be permissible to raise them and harvest
their bodies once they die. Thus, we would not be (directly) killing them and
we would not be depriving them of future pleasures, since they would not have
the capacity to live long enough to experience those pleasures. McMahan seems
to realize that there is something wrong with treating humans in a similar
fashion (perhaps, he suggests, because it causes social inequality), but cannot
see his way clear to extending the same consideration to other animals (McMahan
9-10). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">After giving this scenario some consideration,
I contacted McMahan and suggested that his hypothetical example relied too
heavily on the temporal distance between an act and its consequences. I argued
that, for instance, intentionally administering a slow-acting poison that takes
twenty or more years to kill its victim is no more justified than directly and
immediately killing an innocent person. Since McMahan also suggests that one
cannot infringe upon the rights of a person who does not yet exist, I gave the
counterexample of planting time-activated bombs beneath pigpens before the pigs
in question were born. Provided we had set the bombs up in such a fashion as to
make interference impossible, it seemed no different to me than genetically
altering the lifespan of the pig.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">McMahan responded that, in the case
of a genetically modified pig, the resulting pig would be a different animal
than the pig that results had we not intervened. The modified pig would have a
shorter lifespan, and so would never be in a position to forfeit future pleasures
it would not have in the first place. McMahan’s position flows from the
so-called “non-identity problem”: while causing a person to exist, albeit with
a limited lifespan, would not be better than never existing, it wouldn’t be
worse either, provided that his or her life was worth living. This is because
never existing is a morally neutral state; that is to say, it is neither good
nor bad. Therefore, it is also neither worse nor better to be brought into
existence — even if that existence is in itself good or bad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The moral neutrality of
non-existence can be difficult initially to understand or accept (which seems
to be a main source of tension in debates regarding abortion as well). We are
so accustomed to thinking from the viewpoint of an already existing entity,
that it seems obvious that <i>some</i> of a good thing is better than <i>none</i>
of it. For example, having some apples (or favorite fruit of your choice) is
better than having no apples — at least from the perspective of an individual
who cares. A non-existent entity does not or cannot care;
indeed, it is strictly incoherent to engage in any talk of a nonexistent being
caring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">It seems to me that McMahan’s
argument still neglects two important aspects of moral decision-making: our
ability to foresee the consequences of our actions and the active role genetic
manipulation plays in cutting short a life. My counterexample of what might
actually constitute moral meat-eating (though only in theory, and only under
certain very strict conditions (1)) would be to raise animals who naturally
live to be only two or three years old, say mice, and then eat their bodies
after they have lived out their natural lives. I can see no moral reason to
oppose this practice (though a few aesthetic and practical ones come to mind).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In contrast, consider McMahan’s
example in which we genetically manipulate humans in order to harvest their
organs. The idea of creating people who die relatively young (so that their
organs are in optimal condition for transplantation), seems intuitively wrong.
In fact, we commonly accept the moral obligation to attempt to reverse or
mitigate the effects of these genetic differences. We do not, for example, ignore
or deny out obligations to assist or seek a cure a child with cystic fibrosis.
In fact, we invest considerable resources in preventing these disorders from
occurring to future people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">We know that an inborn trait is not
a sufficient basis on which to decide how long a person deserves to live, since
we have an understanding of what a fulfilling life typically
entails. Our average natural lifespan determines how fast we procreate, how
quickly we mature into adulthood, and even how we perceive time (to name a few
things). A mouse, who lives for about three years, has an entirely different relationship
to any of these biological or cognition milestones. They mature much more
quickly, procreate many more times, and perceive time differently. Pigs, who
can live about 10-15 years, have corresponding biological make-ups and perceptions
of the world. Thus, to cause a pig or human to die at an earlier age than their
evolutionary biology dictates is to cause them harm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The genetic manipulation of any
being to shorten his or her lifespan is to cause a genetic disorder. It does not
change the humanity of a person to have cystic fibrosis any more than to have
any other type of genetic time-bomb. Our moral responsibility is clearly to
change or mitigate the undesirable outcomes for such individuals, and never
(deliberately) to cause them to exist. Similarly, you cannot erase the pig-ness
of a pig simply by giving it a genetic disorder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">It is important to note that the
non-identity problem rests on the assumption that a person’s existence is <i>unavoidably</i>
flawed (see M.A. Roberts’ interpretation in the <i>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i> of, among others’, Derek
Parfit’s work on this subject). Clearly, choosing to modify a pig’s DNA does
not constitute an <i>unavoidable</i> flaw; on the contrary, this is a flaw we
have created for our own purposes and desires. In a sense, any talk about the
comparative existence or non-existence of other beings is a red herring in
cases where we choose to be the creators of the harm done to future persons.
The question is not whether a limited existence is better or worse than
non-existence. The issue is solely the act of committing avoidable harm to
another being, which is clearly wrong. Artificially shortening a life is not in
that being’s best interest unless existing with that flaw is unavoidable (2).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> (1) I generally agree with Gary Francione’s
sentiments regarding the abolition of the social and legal status of animals as
property (see Francione’s “Reflections on <i>Animals, Property, and the Law</i>,
and <i>Rain Without Thunder</i>”). I don’t think we can be trusted with caring
for large numbers of animals, especially in the context of selfish, consumerist
desires rather than in an honest attempt to sustain the kind of reciprocal
relationships we associate with companion animals (and even there, our relations to nonhumans are often abusive).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(2) McMahan had also posited the scenario of a
sick person near death who could only be saved by a drug that would later kill
her. This scenario is entirely different, as this person would already be in
possession of an existence that matters to her, and so measures that prolong
her life (provided that life is worth living) are obviously morally good. In
the case of genetically modifying pigs, we are comparing non-existence to beings
brought into existence, which means the pigs are not yet in possession of a
life which matters to them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Francione, Gary. “Reflections
on Animals, Property, and the Law and Rain Without Thunder.” <i>Law and
Contemporary Problems</i>, vol. 70, no. 1, Dec. 2007, pp. 9–58.,
scholarship.law.duke.edu/lcp/vol70/iss1/2/.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Gardner, Molly. “A
Harm-Based Solution to the Non-Identity Problem.” <i>Ergo - An Open Access
Journal of Philosophy</i>, vol. 2, no. 17, 2015, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0002.017.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">McMahan, Jeffrey.
“Eating Animals The Nice Way.” <i>Deadalus</i>, vol. 137, no. 1, Dec. 2008, pp.
66–76., doi:https://doi.org/10.1162/daed.2008.137.1.66 .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Roberts, M. A.
“The Nonidentity Problem.” <i>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>, 21 July
2009, plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonidentity-problem/#ActWroVirAgeReaAttInt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nicole K. Braden-Johnson is an alumna of MCLA and
works for the Amherst Regional School System<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Value of
Multiculturalism<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Keaton Shoults<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In
the realm of contemporary moral issues, there is </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">prominent
debate about how cultures should </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">structure
themselves in light of concerns involving immigration policies, economic
operations, and cultural integrity. As with any worthy debate, there are people
who feel strongly on either side of the multiculturalism discussion. While some
advocate for the preservation of traditional cultures, citing economic and
cultural worries, many others embrace the idea of multiculturalism, believing
it has both economic and cultural benefits to offer. Furthermore, others feel
passionate about multiculturalism simply because it relates to matters of
freedom: freedom of movement, freedom of peoples to associate with each other,
and so on. Needless to say, the multiculturalism debate is complex. Nevertheless, multicultural societies are
inevitable in a globalizing world. What then, is the value of multiculturalism?
In short, the primary value of multiculturalism is that it tends to produce
more well-rounded societies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Note to Readers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">is
published biannually as an open forum promoting respectful philosophical
exchanges among students, faculty, alumni, and the public. Submissions reflect a diversity of
disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially
encouraged to participate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Address all
correspondence to: <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Dr. David K.
Braden-Johnson, Editor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Department of
Philosophy, IDS, and Modern Languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Massachusetts
College of Liberal Arts <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">North Adams,
Massachusetts 01247 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email: </span><a href="mailto:d.johnson@mcla.edu"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">d.johnson@mcla.edu</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Associate Editor:
Dr. Matthew R. Silliman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email: </span><a href="mailto:m.silliman@mcla.edu"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">m.silliman@mcla.edu</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">There are
several reasons why multiculturalism tends to produce more well-rounded
societies. To begin, a society with mixed cultures promotes intercultural
understanding, which in turn helps close the “us-them” gap that divides
cultures. This is critical in a world where cultural
misunderstanding and ignorance often contributes to widespread fear, hatred,
and animosity. Beyond this, multiculturalism has the effect of aggregating the
cultural capital of many cultures, resulting in a more diverse and
resource-rich society. No one can deny the importance of a population with
diverse experiences and skills in developing and maintaining a thriving
society. Lastly, since multicultural societies are inevitable in the globalized
world at present, one may argue that there is intrinsic value in embracing such
societies. Together, these points demonstrate how multiculturalism can produce
more well-rounded societies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Despite
the promising aspects of multiculturalism, there are many who express reservations. For starters, a
common concern about multiculturalism is that it degrades the integrity of the
host culture. In other words, many people worry that the influx of different
cultures threatens to alter or destroy the traditions of the host culture. Others argue that multiculturalism will lead to
intercultural conflicts. From this view, these conflicts are an inevitable
product of mixing cultures, and thus cultural mixing should be avoided. Lastly,
others will likely point to economic concerns, arguing that the introduction of
a different culture of immigrants will threaten the health of the domestic
economy. Undoubtedly, such economic concerns weigh heavily on policies
affecting multiculturalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In response to the claim that
multiculturalism degrades the integrity of the host culture, we need to consider how it is actually a detriment for a society to
resist cultural melding in a globalized world. It is futile to fight the
globalized reality of our world. As far as intercultural conflicts go, it
is important to note how in the long run these conflicts would be better
resolved through cultural contact than through cultural isolation. Lastly, in
addressing the economic concerns raised by some opponents to multiculturalism,
it can be argued that an economy is actually better off with a more diverse
range of human capital and skills. Ultimately, it stands to reason that
multiculturalism is valuable for how it tends to produce more well-rounded societies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk502051720"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Cohen, AI, Wellman,
C. (Eds.). <i>Contemporary Debates in
Applied Ethics</i>. Wiley, 2005.<o:p></o:p></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Scheffler,
Samuel. “Immigration and the Significance of Culture.” <i>Wiley</i>, pp.
93–125. <i>JSTOR [JSTOR]</i>, </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">libproxy.mcla.edu:2095/stable/pdf/4623784.pdf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Keaton Shoults is a student at MCLA</span></i></div>
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_____________________________<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Origin of
Moral Truth<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">August Stowers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
existence of moral truth is equiprimordial with the human condition. Normative
statements will remain intelligible for as long as human beings possess the
capacity to be harmed or benefited by the actions of their peers. The origin of
harm and benefit is not intrinsic to the universe, but it is intrinsic to
humanity. I will define harm and benefit as results that are, respectively,
conducive and not conducive to a person’s good. As T. M. Benditt points out,
“not everything that is properly called a benefit promotes one's good;
similarly, not everything that is properly called harm adversely affects one's
good” (Benditt 120). Now, a person’s good is not intrinsic to the universe but
arises when a being can conceive of its own good. I use the word “conceive” for
lack of a better term because this capacity is pre-mental, emotional, or
instinctual, and is a consequence of sentience. This means that many non-human
animals have some moral existence as well. What would perish with humankind is
access to moral truth, not moral truth itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I will not
argue that the universe does not have an intrinsic moral reality since it has
no bearing on my conclusion. Moral truth exists <i>at least </i>as a
consequence of sentience and the human condition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Of the
several breeds of moral anti-realism that I will consider as counter-arguments,
the first is emotivism, the idea that morally charged statements serve only to
express emotions. Even though moral judgements are simply expressions of
emotion, emotion is a valid way of knowing when it comes to morality. My
definition of personal good revolves around a subjective and emotional instinct
or intuition on the part of the subject. Expressing a feeling that something is
wrong or right has worth as an argument. Even if emotivism is valid and correct
it may miss the point. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This
leaves the semantic component of emotivism, which is shared by many moral
anti-realist positions, ”the claim that moral sentences lack truth conditions”
(Stoljar 81). This claim is highly counterintuitive since moral statements <i>seem</i>
to possess truth conditions. Daniel Stoljar concludes that the problem of moral
statements having the appearance of truth value is easily solved by distinguishing
between a deflationary and inflationary theory of truth. Under emotivism moral
statements have deflationary truth value, but not inflationary truth value. In
other words, it rests its case on the non-existence of something to which moral
statements might correspond. But this is something that I have provided with my
explanation of moral truth’s origin. Moral statements correspond to the
instinctual existence of personal good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Prescriptivism
is not totally incompatible with my position since it is the position that
moral statements should be taken as imperatives for people in similar
circumstances. If it were to be reconciled with my position, prescriptivism’s
imperatives would have greater weight because they would actually apply to
their subjects. That still leaves the prescriptivist position that moral
statements have no truth value, which I addressed earlier. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Moral
fictionalism views moral statements as fictions that are useful or even
necessary for everyday life. This is where I need to bring in outside
assumptions. Fiction exists in a literal sense, but not in the same place as
physically existent objects. Literally true and fictionally true are not
mutually exclusive categories, and moral truths fit into both. This mode of
truth is also different enough from the truth of the non-fictional world to
keep my position from offending a moral quasi-realist, who would posit that
truth value can be attributed to moral statements even though they do not
actually correspond to ethical facts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The last
moral anti-realist position I will tackle is projectivism. The idea that we
project qualities onto objects of our perception. I will add to it the caveat
that projected qualities exist fictionally and apply literally to the objects
that we attach them to. I refer back to my treatment with moral fictionalism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">As for
moral relativism, it could be reconciled with my position as long as it is not
coupled with moral anti-realism. Moral truth could exist even if it changes by
place or time. And like relativism, my position avoids the problem of
disregarding cultural differences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Some forms
of moral relativism view the logic of moral statements as circular, which is a
problem for me. Of course, moral statements rely on specific moral
systems for their truth or falsity, but, as Torbjörn Tänsjö points out, “The
claim as such makes no reference to the existence of these principles” (131).
The only part of a moral system that an individual moral claim absolutely must
echo is the one that establishes the truth value of moral claims.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Benditt, T. M.
“Benefit and Harm.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 37, no. 1,
1976, pp. 116–120. JSTOR, JSTOR, </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2106377"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">www.jstor.org/stable/2106377</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Winch, Peter. “Can
a Good Man Be Harmed?” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 66, 1965,
pp. 55–70. JSTOR, JSTOR, </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4544722"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">www.jstor.org/stable/4544722</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Stoljar, Daniel.
“Emotivism and Truth Conditions.” Philosophical Studies: An International
Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, vol. 70, no. 1, 1993, pp.
81–101. JSTOR, JSTOR, </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4320397"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">www.jstor.org/stable/4320397</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tännsjö, Torbjörn.
“Moral Relativism.” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for
Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, vol. 135, no. 2, 2007, pp. 123–143.
JSTOR, JSTOR, </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40208744"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">www.jstor.org/stable/40208744</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Moore, Michael S.
“Moral Reality Revisited.” Michigan Law Review, vol. 90, no. 8, 1992, pp.
2424–2533. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1289577.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">August Stowers is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Closing the Gap
Between Deontological and Teleological Theories of Ethics<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Michael McAndrew<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
distinction between teleological and deontological theories of ethics is
unnecessary and can get in the way of sound ethical decision making because it
needlessly separates two very important facets of human existence: the contents
of the world and the contents of our mind. Both things need to play an
important role in the decisions that we make. These two categories, as they are
commonly described have more in common with one another then proponents of
these two branches of thought would like to admit. Deontological arguments are
based off human reason and fulfilling duties that through reason can become
apparent. In trying to fulfill these duties, sometimes one will have to make
difficult choices that make it appears as if those who support deontological
theories are disregarding the consequences of their actions. This could not be
further from the truth of the matter. While there are some obvious negative
consequences that can arise from people following their duty, there is still
one good that does arise out of this, namely the satisfaction of doing one’s
duty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">When
thinking about teleological theories, a similar problem emerges: How is it
possible to maximize the good without a preconceived notion of what the good
is? The concept of the good that you are trying to maximize cannot arise from
experience because there is a variety of states of being that could
be considered good. A teleological theory would become completely incoherent if
all goods were trying to be maximized at once because these goods often conflict
with one another. Without some type of consensus on what the good that one is
trying to maximize is, these theories would fall into relativism as everyone
would try to maximize what they thought was good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Governments
based off of constitutional law are very similar to deontological ethical
theories. In a constitutional government, a set of basic principles (the
constitution) are listed out as the basis for all other laws that are passed
within the country. Countries with constitutional courts, like the United
States Supreme Court, use these courts to decide whether laws passed by
legislature follow these basic principles. Often, these courts will try to make
their decision in an abstract manner based off the original principles set down
in the constitution. While this frequently works, there have been times when
consequences of these judgments are considered and the more abstract,
deontological based judgements are found to have unexpected consequences that
can be damaging. One example of this is the busing of inner city students to
other school districts in the name of equality following the U.S. civil rights
movement. While it was originally thought that this would be a positive thing
to do because it would increase equality, people found that the busing led to
unforeseen problems that negated its positive effects, like academic standards
continuing to fall at schools students were bused from (1). While they do
provide a solid starting point for ethical judgments, they cannot be the only
thing we appeal to as human experience is far too complex and variable to be
able to make accurate and acceptable judgments solely from pre-established
principles. While humans are good abstract thinkers, this ability decreases
with the complexity of the problem (2). Since ethical issues are often some of
the most difficult problems humans must solve, it follows that it would be
difficult for humans to solve these problems without concrete experiential data
to help them along in their decision.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">One may
argue that mixing deontological and teleological theories could lead to the
needs of the individual being disregarded as the consequences of the action
over a wide segment of society must be considered, which may make the impact on
the individual seem negligible. This does not need to be true, as is shown by
John Rawls in his <i>A Theory of Justice. </i>In
this book, Rawls lays out a contractualist view of how society should be
organized. He does this by creating two principles that need to be followed: individual freedom and economic equality. Rawls admits that these two things
cannot happen at the same time and that individual freedoms need to be
established before having economic equality is truly possible (3). This
ordering of rules that must be followed makes it so that society is not
improved at the expense of the individual. The only way for economic equality
to be reached is by first looking at the consequences of individual freedom
then tailoring the rules to ensure that both freedom and equality are both met.
These rules cannot be decided upon outside experience of how this freedom will
affect social and economic conditions. <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(1)
The Learning Network, “April 20, 1971: Supreme Court Rules That Busing Can Be
Used To Integrate Schools, accessed 9/15/17, </span><a href="https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> /2012/04/20/april-20-1971-supreme-court-rules-that-busing-can-be-used-to-integrate-schools/.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(2)
Carsten Murawski and Peter Bossaerts, “How Humans Solve Complex Problems: the
Case of the Knapsack Problem”, <i>Scientific
Reports </i>(2016), accessed 9/15/17,
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34851.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(3)
John Rawls, <i>A Theory of Justice, </i>Harvard
University Press (1971), 214-220. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Michael McAndrew
is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
_____________________________</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Eleven Theses on
Realism<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">David K.
Braden-Johnson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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Metaphysical realism (MR), in concert with
common sense, amounts to the claim that the world exists and has a nature that
is entirely independent of our thoughts, words, and perceptions. However, talk
of the world’s independence — a world, in Kantian nomenclature, that exists
“in-and-for itself” — raises the specter of radical, epistemically debilitating
skepticism: does MR posit a world we cannot possibly know or even sensibly
refer to in thought or language? As Marx’s long-time friend and collaborator,
Friedrich Engels, asks:<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">In what
relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world
itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able
in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of
reality? Thus the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation
of the spirit to nature [is] the paramount question of the whole of philosophy
(Engels, F., Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy).<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the
following eleven theses I attempt to shed some light on these questions.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
1.
Skepticism can inform, but never derail, MR. In my view, skepticism, like the
quest for certain knowledge (see #2 below), looms all too large in
epistemology. Skeptical doubts can serve as a check on our most cherished
beliefs (not always fun but constructive); at the extreme, however, they amount
to little more than a game (fun but not very constructive). But there are
limits. Traditional skepticism, like any number of fantastic hypotheses, can
easily undermine most of our claims to know the world, but not the claim that
the world exists and has a determinate nature, since the latter claim is
presupposed by the skeptical thesis itself (see #6 below).<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
2. MR is
not absolutist, impossibly transcendent, or mystical. Metaphysical claims are,
or ought to be, speculative and testable in terms of the observable differences
that would result if they were true. But notice: Very few things outside of
logic and other formal systems can be known absolutely or with certainty,
including many, if not all, of our internal states. So, if certainty were the
standard of all legitimate knowledge, realism and its anti-realist competitors
— in fact, all epistemological views, including Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenalist
reduction of material objects to qualifications of possible or actual
experience — would suffer alike. Often glossing this latter point, the tendency
in anti-realist circles is selectively to condemn realism for a constitutive
limitation of all empirical inquiry.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
3. MR, as
I understand and apply it, is just that: a metaphysical rather than epistemic
notion about what there is. It amounts to the rather pedestrian-sounding claim
that the nonhuman world (alternatively: the external world, nature, reality,
the universe) exists and has a nature independently of what we think, say, or
do. It is not reducible to or dependent on any epistemic or semantic thesis. In
particular, beyond the bare assertion of its independence from our conceptions,
it does not say anything at all about whether and to what degree we can know
this world or how that knowledge might come about. Of course, various epistemic
theses seem to provide better or worse explanations of our common experience of
the world; but none, including correspondence truth, is entailed by realism.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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4. The
natural world is manifestly impervious to and predates our existence; it
certainly takes no interest (pardon the anthropomorphic flourish) in our
efforts to conceptualize or structure it. In an exact reversal of the emphases
and methods of contemporary linguistic philosophy — which would have us derive
anti-realist conclusions from some theory of meaning or language — we ought to
locate or “naturalize” epistemology within an overarching theory of the world,
just as humans, qua terrestrial mammals, are located within nature as one of
its creatures. That is, metaphysical speculation, as a collection of abductive
inferences, qualifies and extends our understanding of a world that we have
always known, at least in general outline. (For an extended defense of this and
the previous paragraph, see Devitt; see also Weissman. 1989.)<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
5. There
can be no “God’s eye,” neutral, transcendent, or otherwise non-sensed view of
the world, c<i>ontra</i> Putnam’s and Rorty’s well-known critiques of
realism. To perceive the world is always to employ the perceptual resources of
some perceiver or other occupying a determinate spatio-temporal location. That
is, the nonhuman world can only be known, if it can be known at all, in terms
first I, employing the chaotic and relatively autonomous cognitive skills of an
infant, and then we, as language and sociality enter the scene more completely,
supply in our conceptualizations of experience. Furthermore, our choice of
conceptual scheme is mostly arbitrary. I resist saying it is entirely arbitrary
given the plausibility of certain nativist, evolutionary, or naturalized
accounts of our thinking. Of course, not all conceptual schemes will make
sense, comport with basic logic or rationality, or prove at all useful. These
words explain my “trivial constructivist” (see von Glasersfeld) sympathies and
natural preference for certain pedagogical methods: Epistemically speaking, the
world never, or very rarely, imposes itself on us (some exceptions can be found
in the dictates of elementary logic where, for example, the principle of
noncontradiction has a naturally existing counterpart in the refusal of
instantiated particulars to possess contradictory properties); rather, we
decide what to look for in the world and how to conceptualize it. Given these
qualifications, I can unambiguously, if rather trivially, assert that all
knowledge is a construction of the knower.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
6. It is
a truism that every view of the world is a view of someone and from somewhere
(#5 above). Nevertheless, from that fact alone nothing of (especially
anti-realist) interest logically follows about what can or cannot be known. In
particular, it does not follow that we cannot know the world as it is
independent of our experience. What does follow is the related, second-order
and skeptical worry that we might not know in any particular case if we fail or
succeed to know the world as it is independent of our experience (see #1
above). But this limited skepticism is no threat to realism, for two reasons.
First, MR supplies the very condition of intelligibility for all varieties of
skepticism — if there were no world, there would be nothing to be skeptical
about. And second, many of our speculative, referential claims about the world
receive experiential confirmation as we infer abductively from successful or
unsuccessful action to the external conditions for the truth of these
representations. At any rate, these are epistemic worries unrelated to the basic
assumption of MR (see #3 above), that the world exists and has a nature
independent of all that we think, say, or do.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
7.
Anti-realism (alternatively: radical phenomenalism, relativistic
neo-Kantianism, postmodern idealism, irrealism, radical constructivism/empiricism,
etc.) supposes that knowledge must consist of the interanimation of these two
things: The indubitable contents of immediate experience and the rules of
deductive inference. These restrictions on knowledge guarantee that the world
remains unknowable or unthinkable, since none of its features would be directly
inspectable in this way. Further, it restricts anti-realists to the flat,
descriptive plane of sensory data — the so-called “experiential worlds” of
radical constructivism — disallowing reference either to extra-mental causes of
the differentiations and orders present to experience or to the uninspectable
properties of knowers capable of organizing and conceptualizing the data
received. Despite the well advertised utility of their view (see Rorty and
Putnam), anti-realist pragmatists or constructivists of a radical stripe have
embraced what amounts to, when compared to MR, an explanatorily useless
doctrine. Relaxing the logical empiricist demand for verification, realism
proposes this alternative, hypothetical method: we infer abductively from the
inspectable differences and samenesses to their extra-linguistic,
extra-conceptual conditions and causes. The existence and nature of the
external world then serves as the conclusion of a rather global and often
unconscious inference to the best explanation of successful practice. Contrary
to radical empiricist scruples, experience is not the object of knowledge, but
that activity by which we come to know the world (see Devitt).<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
8.
Analysis suggests that coherence truth collapses in every case to
correspondence truth, which is apparently ingredient in the very notion of
truth. Combining our best theory of truth with realism we say, in a
neo-Aristotelian spirit, that our thoughts are true when and if they correspond
to the way things are (see Weissman, 1993).<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
9. Given
the arbitrariness and diversity of our conceptualizations, correspondence is
rarely picture-like or isomorphic. Rather, our thoughts and sentences signify
possible configurations of properties and relations obtaining in the world.
When the possibilities signified are actual, the sentences are true. Though
correspondence is the apparent meaning of truth, what it means in any
particular instance for some element of a conceptual scheme to correspond to
the world is determined internally to that conceptual scheme. For example,
however I might choose to conceptualize some entity X, it is the world, not my
scheme, that determines the truthfulness of claims such as “the world contains more
than one X or “X is larger than the average porcupine.” That is, from my
naturalistic perspective, truth is radically non-epistemic.<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
10.
Furthermore, given the arbitrariness and diversity of our conceptualizations,
the world determines but never guarantees our access to truth. We may rarely,
if ever, be right about the world; but even when, as traditional skepticism
would have it, we are entirely or mostly wrong, we are wrong about the way the
world really is. That is, contemporary realism combined with correspondence
truth is always fallibilistic and never “naïve.”<o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
11. Since
I deny the sense of deriving MR from the immediate contents of experience, my
view, <i>contra</i> critics like Rorty, does not attempt to do what
is clearly impossible: To know the world extra-conceptually or without the
assistance of any concepts or input from experience. Rather, I claim only to
infer abductively from the noticeable effects to its conditions within a
particular conceptual scheme to the extra-conceptual and determinate nature of
the world, just as a mapmaker makes a map of the world that contains his or her
own position. While to know the world without employing thoughts is quite
nonsensical, to know the world as it is without thoughts is commonplace.
Appeals to science and common sense, rather than signaling a naïve faith in the
world as guarantor of truth, are used fallibilistically and hypothetically to
provide billions of daily bits of evidence in favor of a more robust realism
that posits the mind-independent existence and nature of the many objects and
relations of everyday experience, like trees, cats, rocks, and other people,
etc. The abductively confirmed hypothesis of the existence of the objects and
relations of this extra-conceptual world, its successful application to
science, practice, and everyday life, its sheer popularity and persistence, all
conspire to make this the default position against which alternatives inherit
the burden of proof. There is, I suppose, no non-question begging, deductive
proof of realism or immediate grasping of reality (but see Stove for a
compelling defense of the view that metaphysical realism is a necessary truth,
and Pols for a defense of the idea that we directly apprehend much of the
world).<o:p></o:p></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">References</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Devitt, Michael.
1991. <i>Realism and Truth</i>. Basil Blackwell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Pols, Edward. 1992. <i>Radical
Realism</i>. Cornell University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Putnam, Hilary. 1987. <i>The
Many Faces of Realism</i>. Open Court Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Rorty, Richard. 1979. P<i>hilosophy
and the Mirror of Nature</i>. Princeton University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Stove, David. 1991. <i>The
Plato Cult</i>. Basil Blackwell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Von Glasersfeld, Ernst.
1995. <i>Radical Constructivism</i>. Falmer Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Weissman, David J. 1989. <i>Hypothesis
and the Spiral of Reflection</i>. SUNY Press; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Weissman, David J. 1993. <i>Truth’s
Debt to Value</i>. Yale University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">David
K Braden-Johnson teaches Philosophy at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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_____________________________</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">Kant's Transcendental Idealism and the Crisis of Metaphysics<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Paul Nnodim</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">“To
avoid all misapprehension, it is necessary to explain, as clearly as possible,
what our view is regarding the fundamental constitution of sensible knowledge
in general. What we have meant to say is that all our intuition is nothing but
the representation of appearance; that the things which we intuit are not in
themselves what we intuit them as being, nor their relations so constituted in
themselves as they appear to us, and that if the subject, or even only the
subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole
constitution and all the relations of objects in space and time, nay space and
time themselves, would vanish. As appearances, they cannot exist in themselves,
but only in us. What objects may be in themselves, and apart from all this
receptivity of our sensibility, remains completely unknown to us. We know
nothing but our mode of perceiving them…. Even if we could bring our intuition to the highest degree of clearness,
we should not thereby come any nearer to the constitution of objects in
themselves. We should still know only our mode of intuition, that is, our
sensibility. … What the objects may be in themselves would never become known
to us even through the most enlightened knowledge of that which is alone given
us, namely, their appearance….</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>” <span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">(</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Immanuel
Kant – <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> translated
by Norman Kemp Smith, 2007, 81: General Remarks on Transcendental Aesthetic.)<i><span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Introduction<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As the excerpt indicates, the focus of this paper
is Immanuel Kant's (1724-1804) distinction between appearance (phenomenon)
and the thing-in-itself (<i>das Ding an sich </i>or noumenon) in the <i>Critique
of Pure Reason </i>(1781) – hereafter <i>Critique</i>.
For some of Kant’s critics (including some German idealists, such as
Fichte and Hegel), the hermeneutical debacle that accompanies this juxtaposition
marks the crisis of metaphysics. If the scope of metaphysical inquiry encompasses
the potential unraveling of ultimate reality, they argue, then a plausible corollary of Kant’s unknowable noumenon is the futility
of the metaphysical enterprise. In
distinguishing appearance from the thing-in-itself, does Kant suggest the
existence of two ontological worlds, one phenomenal and the other noumenal?Or are the phenomenon and the noumenon two aspects of the same thing? Does his
critical philosophy make ontological claims or merely espouse epistemic
propositions? And what does metaphysics mean for Kant? I will be defending what I see as Kant’s epistemological and
methodological refutation of the metaphysical dogmatism of both his
predecessors and contemporaries. My claim is that the Kantian Copernican Revolution
was a relatively unproblematic thesis, but one injudiciously mired in the
circuitousness and irresolution of its author. Kant’s doctrinal
inconsistencies, even in the revised, second edition of the <i>Critique </i>(1787) encourage his detractors
to galvanize the “two-worlds” and the “two-aspects” debate.<i> </i>(1) Nonetheless, in the letters he wrote to some of his
associates, Kant appeared to lend more support to the “two-aspects” interpretation.
By considering his transcendental idealism
as merely a reflection upon the synthetic <i>a priori </i>conditions of human cognition
and the fallibilism of experiential
knowledge, I hope to have defended Kant’s critical philosophy from possible
charges of empirical idealism. Thus, instead of pronouncing an “eschatological” judgment upon metaphysics,
as some of Kant’s critics allege, the <i>Critique </i>serves
a propaedeutic function to the discourse<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk505018729">. <o:p></o:p></a></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>What is Metaphysics for Kant? <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In the history of Western
philosophy, the term metaphysics is but an accidental construct. Tὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ
βιβλία, or “the books that follow the
books on physics” was the phrase adopted
by Andronicus of Rhodes (ca. 70 B.C.), the editor of Aristotle’s works, to catalog </span><i><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">πρώτη</span></i><i><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> φιλοσοφία</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> or <i>First Philosophy</i>. Since then, this
collection of Aristotle’s treatises on </span><i><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">όν</span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">η</span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">όν</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> or knowledge of beings qua beings goes by
the name <i>Metaphysics, </i>(2)<span style="background: white;"> while</span> what Aristotle precisely meant by </span><i><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">όν</span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">η</span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span lang="EL" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">όν</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> remains a conundrum.
<span style="background: white;">In the search for incontrovertible reasons for the appropriateness of the word
metaphysics, medieval scholars misconstrued the original meaning of the term. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274), for example, understood metaphysics to mean the science of
the supersensible world (<i>meta-physica</i>
– beyond or after physical nature): “metaphysical sciences would mean, those
which we study after having mastered the sciences which deal with the physical
world.” (Cath. Encyl. 226) </span>In <i>Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics </i>(1997),
Heidegger recommends that <span style="background: white;">we first question
whether what is brought together in the Aristotelian <i>Metaphysics</i> is “metaphysics” in the first place before defining the
subject matter of <i>First Philosophy</i> (Heidegger 4) </span>Evidently, the post-Aristotelian development of
metaphysics as a field of philosophical inquiry is
not predicated on the template of an existing Aristotelian system, “but
rather to a lack of understanding concerning the questionable and open nature
of the central problems left by Plato and Aristotle” (Heidegger 5</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In the <i>Critique</i>,
Kant begins his inquiry into the nature of metaphysics with “architectonic
circumscription and delineation” (Heidegger 2). Metaphysics requires a ground-laying or ground works, the laying of a
foundation through which its essence can be
understood. How “laying the ground” became the <i>Critique of Pure Reason </i>indicates that, perhaps, Kant’s idea of
metaphysics differs from the present-day meaning of the term. As Heidegger further notes: “The horizon from within
which Kant saw metaphysics and in terms of which his ground-laying must be
fixed may be characterized roughly by means of Baumgarten’s definition: “<i>Metaphysica est Scientia prima cognitionis
humanae principia continens</i>” (Baumgarten 1) (3) or “Metaphysics is the
science that contains the first principles of human knowledge” (Heidegger
3). For Kant, the sphere of metaphysical inquiry transcends the empirical
analysis of both human experience and nature. It
is literally, to say the least, the science which follows after and goes beyond
physics (nature): “…now φύσις is called
Nature, but we can arrive at the concept of Nature in no other way than through
experience, so that the science which follows from it is called Metaphysics
(from <i>μετά,</i> trans, and <i>physica</i>). It is a science that is, so to speak, outside of the field of
physics, which lies on the other side of it” (Heidegger 4). (4)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Contemporary critics of Kant’s transcendental idealism are
either unmindful of his idea of metaphysics or tend to define metaphysics
differently, while retroactively demanding that Kant agree with their views.
They define metaphysics as the study of whatever is or ontology, and</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">everything that
exists is its subject matter. <span style="background: white;">For
Kant, however, metaphysical</span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> questions are about the operation of thoughts
called judgments. In the <i>Critique</i>, he presents two of these judgments: analytic and synthetic. All analytic judgments are <i>a priori</i>. They are informed by necessity
and universality and do not depend on our
experience of particular cases to be valid.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> For example, all triangles have
three angles. The predicate (angles) is
implicit in the subject. Such a predicate
does not give us any new information about the subject.
Most synthetic judgments are <i>a
posteriori. </i>For example, the statement “all girls at Mt. Greylock Regional
High School play lacrosse” is a synthetic <i>a
posteriori </i>judgment. The proposition may be contingently true, but not necessarily true. The validity of
this statement is dependent upon sense experience (see Stumpf and Fieser 276).<span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">But can there be a third judgment that is both <i>a priori</i> (universal and necessary) but
also arising from experience (synthetic)?
If so, </span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">how are <i>a priori</i> synthetic
judgments possible? Despite the daunting nature of the question, Kant believes
that we already make such judgments in
the sciences, such as in mathematics and physics.
Thus, to pose a similar question
in metaphysics is not preposterous</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
because metaphysics relies on a judgment
that is akin to what obtains in the sciences<span style="color: #212121;">. Nevertheless, such an inquiry would cause some tremor
at the foundations of the dogmatic metaphysics
of continental rationalism and British empiricism. This explains why Kant’s figurative laying of the ground for the
foundations of metaphysics must be carried
out as a critique of pure reason.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Copernican
Revolution <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
discoveries in the sciences in 18<sup>th</sup> century Europe impressed Kant.
However, he was quite disillusioned with the dogmatic rationalism represented primarily by Leibniz and skeptical
empiricism, especially that of Hume. That said, science also had its problems
as it raised the bar for philosophical inquiry. The mechanistic and
reductionist methodologies of the sciences posed serious problems for the
philosopher, who stood helpless as the mechanical worldview gobbled up the ideas
of God, freedom, and moral values. For the Rationalists, human reason was the
only source of reliable knowledge. The empiricists insisted on the superiority
of sense experience. Hume’s empirical criterion of meaning led to his outright
denial of God, self, and causality. In fact, George Berkeley (1685-1753) went a
little further to claim that all we could perceive were our own ideas and to be is to be perceived (<i>esse
est percipi</i>). <span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Kant’s
novel proposition about the acquisition
of knowledge, in the <i>Critique</i>, is
that objects conform to the operation of the mind and not the other way round. He would
arrive at this supposition by following the footsteps of Copernicus, who
“failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly
bodies on the supposition that they all revolved round the spectator, he tried
whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve
and the stars to remain at rest” (Stumpf & Fieser 278). Kant does
not claim that the human mind fashions objects or like Descartes, that humans possess innate ideas. His so-called Copernican
revolution simply means that the human mind is not a passive recipient of sense
data, but engages actively in the epistemological process. In other words,
human ways of knowing go beyond the passive reception of sense impressions to make judgments about experience itself.
The mind imposes what Kant calls the categories of thought on the object of
sensation. These categories are like the lenses through which humans perceive
reality: “[j]ust as a person who wears colored glasses sees everything in that
color, so every human being, having the faculty of thought, inevitably thinks
about things in accordance with the
natural structure of the mind” (278). Thus, neither intellect nor sensibility
alone can produce knowledge, but both must complement each other in the knowing
process. Hence, Kant thinks that he has successfully reconciled rationalism
with empiricism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Kant’s Transcendental Idealism<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Kant’s </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">transcendental
idealism posits that objects in space and time are not absolute, but relative
to the necessary conditions of experience. By implication, this claim suggests the idea of a reality beyond those conditions
and limitations (phenomenon) - the world as it is in itself (noumenon). The
mind as a direct contributor of knowledge exerts some influence or authority
upon the nature of reality. We may call this constructivist realism. Thus, phenomenal reality is the world or things as we
experience them in space and time (forms of intuition) through the categories
of thought. The categories of thought, twelve in
number, are listed under four concepts: quality (one or many), quantity
(positive or negative), relation (cause and effect), and modality (possible or
impossible) (Kant 57). Unlike the empiricists, Kant does not view concepts as
faint copies of sensory images, but as rules for making judgments. Concepts are not to be reified or regarded as
things in the mind. They only have meaning
in relation to the function they have in judgment. We judge the variety of our
experiences or the “manifold of experience” as Kant calls it, through certain fixed forms or concepts (Stumpf
& Fieser 279).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Noumenal
reality or the thing-in-itself (<i>Ding an sich) </i>is the world as it is independent
of our experience of it. But can the noumenon be reified? Does it point to a
thing as such?<span style="background: white;"> Philosophers after
Kant have been guilty of pardonable amphiboly because of his ambivalent
presentation of both the transcendental idealism and the transcendental
aesthetic. Moses Mendelsohn (1729-1786) thought of the thing-it-self “as a
distinct entity, so that an appearance is one thing, the thing-in-itself
another” (Scruton 55). Kant’s student J.S. Beck “took the phrase
‘thing-in-itself’ to refer to a way of describing the very same object that we
also know as an appearance” (55). It is
plausible to follow Beck’s interpretation, since Kant himself supports this
version of the idea of the noumenon more than the two-worlds aspect in his
correspondence with Beck and several passages of the follow-up book - <i>Critique
of Practical Reason</i>, and in other letters (55). He writes: “All objects
that can be given to us can be conceptualized in two ways; on the one hand, as
appearances; on the other, as things in themselves” (55). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Conclusion</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
will conclude by saying that Kant’s critical philosophy is not the end of
metaphysics but a preparation for it. His
transcendental idealism states that the
claims we make about <span style="background: white; color: #222222;">empirical
knowledge are real, even though we cannot prove them with absolute certainty.</span>
There may be another dimension to being,
which is not only unknown to the human mind
but will never be given to human
knowledge, no matter how hard we try. The noumenon, in my understanding, plays
no positive role in theoretical knowledge.
It has empty extensional meaning, which
reminds us of the limitations of knowledge and sensation – namely the
parameters established by the conditions of experience (see also Scruton 56). It would amount to a category mistake to think
otherwise. Kant’s transcendental idealism is also clearly distinguishable from
any form of Berkeley’s empirical idealism or in its contemporary form – radical constructivism. Kant does not
say that we know only the contents of our minds or ideas, or as Strawson claims
that <span style="background: white;">“…reality is supersensible and
that we can have no knowledge of it” (Allison 5). What we know or can know
through the senses and the imposition of the categories of thought is reality
and is objective. However, phenomenal knowledge is not absolutely objective. </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">As fallibilism demands, we can accept</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> propositions about empirical knowledge even though we cannot demonstrate their validity with absolute
certainty. </span><span style="background: white;">Like
the refraction of the rainbow on a pond of water through which Goethe's Faust perceives
the beauty of the sun and declares: “<i>Am
farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben</i>” (Geothe 8) (5), the phenomena provide us with objective knowledge that we may nevertheless call a refraction.</span><span style="background: white;"> Rather than signaling the crisis of
metaphysics, the <i>Critique</i> is a preparation for metaphysics or as the title
of Kant’s follow-up book suggests – A <i>Prolegomena</i> <i>to Any Future Metaphysics</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background: white;">*I would like to thank my good friend, Professor Uchenna Okeja of Rhodes University, South Africa, for his invaluable suggestions.</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">Bibliography</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Allison,
H.E. <i>Kant’s Transcendental Idealism</i>.
Yale University Press, 2004.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Goethe,
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<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heidegger,
Martin. <i>Kant and the Problem of
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Heinze, M. <i>Vorlesungen Kants ueber Metaphysik asu drei
Semestern</i>. Abhdlg. Der K. Saechsich. Ges. Der Wissenschaften. Volume XIV,
phil.-hist. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">KL. 1894.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Herbermann, C.G., et al. (eds).
The Catholic Encylopedia. The Encyclopedia Press Inc, 1922.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Kant,
Immanuel. <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007.</span><span lang="DE" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Scruton,
Roger. <i>Kant: A Very Short Introduction</i>.
Oxford University Press, 2001.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Seung, T.K.
<i>Kant: A Guide For the Perplexed</i>.
Continuum, 2007.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Simmonds, G.P</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">. “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: A
Hopeless Case?” (<span style="background: white;">http://www.academia.edu/13693414/Kants_Transcendental_Idealism_A_Hopeless_Case)</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Stumpf,
Samuel Enoch & Fieser, James. <i>Philosophy:
History and Readings</i>. McGraw-Hill, 2008.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wood, Allen
(ed.). <i>Basic Writings of Kant</i>. Modern
Library, 2001.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Notes</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">(1) See Simmonds 2015.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">(2)
The Cath. Encyc. </span><span lang="DE" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">P. 226.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">(3)
</span><span lang="DE" style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">A.G. Baumgarten,
Metaphysica, 2d. ed (1743 ss1), cited in Heidegger 1997, 3.</span><span lang="DE" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">(4)
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Semestern</i>. Abhdlg. Der K. Saechsich. Ges. Der Wissenschaften. Volume XIV,
phil.-hist. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">KL. 1894, p.666 (S. 186) – see also Heidegger 4.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(5)Life
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David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-27404074905426430262017-05-05T12:53:00.005-04:002017-05-07T18:26:09.531-04:00Volume 23.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THESIS XII</span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A Philosophical Review<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Volume 23 • Number 1<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ó</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> May, 2017<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Avery S. Finnivan<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Intention and Consequence: Reply to Petruzella </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Devin Snell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">A Literature of the Real </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"> <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Katherine Duval<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The Emotional Power of Fiction </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Jonathan Hoel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The Poetics of Exegesis </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Brett Belcastro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Persuasion and Coercion: Crito and the Social Contract </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Matthew J. Luz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Does Anatomy Determine Autonomy?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The Psychoanalytic Construction of Gender </span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Intention and Consequence<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Reply to Petruzella<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Avery S. Finnivan<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Actions draw moral significance from context. Moral obligations thus include action and reasonable assumption of consequence. This renders consciously ‘gaming the system’ impossible and upholds the ought-implies-can principle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">A single action, independent of context, lacks moral significance. Moving one’s fist forward is amoral. Moving one’s fist forward to block someone from stepping in front of an oncoming train is morally commendable; moving one’s fist forward into a friend’s solar plexus is morally wrong. Each action is infinitely separable into smaller actions. A ‘morally significant action’ is thus a group of actions bound together by the chains of plausible causality. If one intentionally drops a vial of smallpox off the Empire State Building, that action differs inherently from similarly dropping a water-filled vial, because one’s knowledge of the contents and reasonable prediction of the results grant it moral significance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The pilot in Gerol Petruzella’s scenario commits a grave moral wrong, but not the wrong of crashing the plane. His immoral action is consuming alcohol in the knowledge that doing so compromises his ability to fly. His original obligation was not merely to fly the plane safely, but to take actions ensuring his continued ability to do so. Once inebriated, he possessed no further obligation to fly safety, but did not game the system or lessen his moral responsibility – he had already failed his obligation by drinking alcohol in the cockpit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">This conception of moral obligation might ring false to some, for by replacing consequence with reasonable assumption of consequence, the scale of good or evil resulting from an action no longer affects a moral agent’s blameworthiness. Had the pilot managed to land safety despite his inebriation, could one justly claim he had committed a moral wrong? After all, no one died or sustained injury; it all worked out for the best.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In response, I argue that not only is the pilot just as morally reprehensible if he lands safely, but that this seemingly unintuitive conclusion reinforces my thesis. Great harm often results from so-called ‘natural evils’ - forces and incidents unrelated to moral agents’ actions. Since actions exist in the world, consequences of morally relevant actions intermingle with consequences of natural forces, muddying any clear path from action to result. This confusion necessitates a focus on intention, not result, as the locus for moral obligation. If a waiter directs someone to sit in a chair which later serves as the crash site for a falling chandelier, surely we would not hold the waiter morally responsible for placing the unfortunate victim in that ill-fated seat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">In the absence of a coherent moral system tying responsibility to results, intention stands as the only reasonable anchor for obligation. One cannot consciously game this system, since intention exists in the very place where such a deception must occur – the mind. With intention as a bridge between action and consequence, the ought-implies-can principle remains intact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Petruzella, Gerol. “Must Ought Imply Can? A Response to Vranas.” Thesis XII: A Philosophical Review Volume 22 Number 1 (2016). Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Vranas, Peter B.M. “I Ought, Therefore I Can.” Philosophical Studies 136.2 (2007): 167-216. Web.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Avery S. Finnivan is an MCLA Alumnus</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">A Literature of the Real<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Emotion in literature is a genuine and communicated experience. The two joint necessities of emotion in literature indemnify it against idle fantasy. Emotional states, permissible as having precedented cause within lived experience, are an indirect impression derived from a combination of competing factors. Just as language requires semiotic participation between <i>signifier </i>and <i>signified (1), </i>fictional works are matrices of participatory transmission (2). The superstructure of attending to a work of literature carries within it textual convention (and with those conventions come interpretive implicatures) (3).<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">When implicated behaviors involve belief or emotion, it is natural to ask from whence these experiences came. Readers and philosophers alike distrust unauthorized beliefs, and are together baffled by contradictory culprits for emotive response. Kendall Walton writes: “to construe this involvement as consisting of our having psychological attitudes toward fictional entities is to tolerate mystery and court confusion”, as it leads to the attribution of reality to fictional entities (4). For however irrational it would be to attribute qualities to something which does not exist, it would be even more irrational to give it agency from beyond reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Fiction itself exists. Works of fiction are objects in themselves, in whatever form they take, but they are also directions outward to manufactured ideas. Ideation is a concrete indicator of the internal faculties, and its import remains interactive with external input. The import of fictional ideas is not that they are claims referring to literal instantiations of places and people. Instead, these ideas are an attunement with the author’s intended make-believe: to harbor a particular experience of ideation for the purpose of other communicated values.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">These values can stir us to action or emotion in as genuine a way as the loss of a possession or the threat of unpleasant sensation. We attribute causal authority and reality to the effect fictionalizing has on us, as well as to the methods we use in sharing that effect. The intention of authors operates alongside the intentionality of artists: to provide readers with a transformative exposure to text. The metaphysics of fictional works remains stable, even as the linguistic battlegrounds of meaning and value rage on (5).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Fiction is not a collection of unreal objects, but rather a constructed participant in real correspondence. Like other symbol systems, body language and facial expressions being two, fictive literature is a network of metaphors. There is no contradiction in being moved by figures of speech. Neither is there a contradiction to being moved by fiction.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">1. The work of a sign is to relate meaning. Words bear out the burden of being connected to concepts and contexts, and by doing so acquiring greater meaning. Individualized elements, such as the construction of an imagined character with consistent traits, play a similar role in a work of fiction. Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure’s theory of signs is one attempt to understand the acquisition of both denotative and connotative value within language, and so some of his terminology has become proximal to the landscape of critical analysis. Watts, Cedric, and Ferdinand De Saussure. “Bottom’s Children”. Reconstructing Literature. Ed. Laurence Lerner. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985. 25-35. Print<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk481510000">.<o:p></o:p></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">2. Some thinkers have acknowledged the volatile or impermanent nature of these participations. Jacques Derrida, as a prominent example of such a thinker, argued that self-reflexivity was necessary to maintain the “sign” as a discrete unit. Semiological or otherwise, the complications of symbol-participation cannot dissuade us from believing in the genuine quality of such a participation. As such, these complications are less relevant to determining the possibility of genuine human emotions when presented with interpreted writings. Silverman, Hugh J. “Jacques Derrida”. Postmodernism: The Key Figures. Ed. Hannes Bertens and Joseph Natoli. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2009. 110-119. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">3. Implicatures here being close to Paul Grice’s analysis of connotation, isolated semantic meaning, and the ubiquitous qualities of utterance-intentionality. Davis, Wayne, and Paul Grice. "Implicature." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 06 May 2005. Web. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">4. Views such as Walton’s deserve attention. The problems inherent in objectifying characters or fictional settings destroy our ability to talk literally about their presence in the world as such. Fiction is a metaphorical medium, but it requires us to suspend our awareness of metaphor while pursuing it. In order to achieve any clarity of meaning, philosophical utterances must be careful to announce at what level they are evaluating texts. To engage with the denotative formal elements of a claim, it must in part become isolated from its expressive contexts. John, Eileen, and Dominic Mciver Lopes, eds. Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">5. Theorists differ on the types of concepts which arise from interpretation, and they differ also on the locus of value that is being interpreted. As Lesley D. Harman noticed, ideas which are similarly influential are not similarly compatible. George Herbert Mead, Charles Peirce, Saussure, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillard have all contributed to linguistic understanding under the shadow of incompatible models. Harman, Lesley D. “Sign, Symbol, and Metalanguage: Against the Integration of Semiotics and Symbolic Interactionism.” Symbolic Interaction, vol. 9, no. 1, 1986, pp. 147–160., www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.1986.9.1.147.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Devin Snell is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Emotional Power of Fiction<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">It is undeniable that people feel strong attachments to fictional works. Often, people refer to themselves as being moved by a work, or devastated for the tragedy a particular character experiences. However, Colin Radford has problematized the simple colloquialism of being “moved by fiction” by introducing a paradox stating that people can only be moved by real things, and since fictions are not real, people cannot be genuinely moved by them. Therefore, when Raskolnikov from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s <i>Crime and Punishment</i> kills the pawnbroker and her half-sister, we are not genuinely moved by the two deaths, nor the position that led Raskolnikov to commit the murder, nor his subsequent psychological torment. We are merely pretending, or, as Walton says, having a quasi-emotional reaction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">However, the paradox becomes obsolete if the idea that fictions do not exist can be called into question. If Raskolnikov exists, it is completely reasonable to have such intense emotional reactions to his actions. I take the position of thought-theorists, arguing that Raskolnikov, and all fictional characters, do exist, in the sense that thoughts exist. To say that a thought does not exist, and cannot emotionally move someone, can be quickly proven false. An adult who, as a child, was afraid of the dark may realize through maturity that there are no monsters lurking, but the idea of them still causes nervousness and forces the adult to turn on the lights. Or, for example, I have a terrible habit of imagining deeply disturbing things happening in my personal life while in the shower. Often, I am brought to tears by vivid imaginings of my mother dying in a car accident. Is this just a dramatic reaction to a fictional mental story I have created, or is at an actual emotional reaction to the image in my mind of my mother’s death? Some will claim that reaction may be genuine, but that the reaction is caused by the <i>possibility </i>of my thoughts occurring, and not the thoughts themselves. However, the adult who is still anxious in the dark does not rationally believe a monster will be waiting in the shadows to attack, and when I think about the very real fact—not possibility—that my mother will one day die, I am greatly saddened, but not moved in such an intense way as when I imagine how her death may occur. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Thoughts are entities. Though not tangible, they can inspire genuine emotional reactions. Moreover, because thoughts exist internally, and can provide emotional and intellectual insight without needing to be actualized, there is arguably more freedom in the degree to which people can react to them. Were you to hear of the murder of a pawnbroker in your own neighborhood (potentially, the pawnbroker was someone you saw at the grocery store, or whose child was in the same class as yours) the immediate and understandable emotional reaction would be to want justice for the murder. Few would feel compelled to empathize with the murderer, or attempt to understand his psychology. To do so would feel morose, and perhaps a betrayal of the murdered pawnbroker. However, when we read <i>Crime and Punishment</i>, we are able to try to understand the psychology of a murderer. Because the pawnbroker exists as a thought contained in the world of the story, we do not have the messy moral dilemmas that could potentially limit certain emotional reactions and insights as when the pawnbroker was a neighbor. Nuance is revealed as much as it ever is in fictional works, and I believe there is more of an opportunity to understand fictional characters as they are than it is to understand actual people, who so often remain enigmas for a multitude of reasons. We are able to confront fictional characters and events on all levels, knowing that their existence as thoughts is what allows for this sort of empathetic experimentation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Moreover, Susan Feagin argues in her essay “The Pleasures of Tragedy” that fictional works dealing with subject matters often described as “tragedy” remind us of our morality (188). By being appropriately horrified, saddened, or angered by a fictional work, we are confirming the morality of our society and ourselves. Therefore, the emotional reactions must be genuine, or we could not conversely say that we are genuinely moral, and that is why we are responding in such a way. To someone who abhors the murder – as many of us would claim to be – the concept of murder must be as disturbing as a murder, for the existence of murder is present in both the thought and the act. Therefore, Raskolnikov’s murder of the pawnbroker makes us realize that we ourselves are not murderers, and could not have the capacity to be such, because of our real emotional response to his actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Note to Readers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Thesis XII: A Philosophical Review </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">is published biannually as an open forum promoting respectful philosophical exchanges among students, faculty, alumni, and the public. Submissions reflect a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially encouraged to participate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Address all correspondence to: <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Dr. David K. Braden-Johnson, Editor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Thesis XII: A Philosophical Review<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Department of Philosophy, IDS, and Modern Languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">North Adams, Massachusetts 01247 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email: </span><a href="mailto:d.johnson@mcla.edu"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">d.johnson@mcla.edu</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Associate Editor: Dr. Matthew R. Silliman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email: </span><a href="mailto:m.silliman@mcla.edu"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">m.silliman@mcla.edu</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Fictions exist as much as anything else in the medium of thought, and thoughts can quite clearly move us emotionally in a genuine way. Radford’s paradox dissolves when fictions are understood to be real entities, arguably with more ability to make us question and investigate our emotions and morality than objects in the tangible world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Feagin, Susan. The Pleasures of Tragedy. Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readins: An Anthology. Ed. Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006. 185-93. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Radford, Colin. How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina? Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings; An Anthology. Ed. Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006. 170-76. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Walton, Kendall. Fearing Fictionally. Philosophy of Literature: Contemporary and Classic Readings; An Anthology. Ed. Eileen John and Dominic McIver Lopes. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006. 177-84. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Katherine Duval is a student at MCLA</span></i><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">On the Poetics of Exegesis<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The hermeneutics of literature begins<i> </i>with scripture, before its eventual expansion to include much of the western canon and, in the later 20<sup>th</sup> century, all literary form. In his seminal essay <i>The Death of the Author</i>, Roland Barthes insists that we separate art from artist, in order to move discourse further, implying that the destination of the text cannot be autonomous and must be ahistorical: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">"The absence of the Author is not only a historical fact or an act of writing: it utterly transforms the modern text (or -- what is the same thing -- the text henceforth written and read so that in it, on every level, the Author absents himself). Time, first of all, is no longer the same. The Author, when we believe in him, is always conceived as the past of his own book: the book and the author take their places of their own accord on the same line, cast as a before and an after: the Author is supposed to feed the </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif;">book -- that is, he pre-exists it, thinks, suffers, lives for it; …every text is eternally written here and now." (Barthes, 3).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">I agree with Barthes’ assertion: all too often in literary analysis we become transfixed dissecting the somewhat extraneous biography of the author, in order to come to some deeper understanding of a complex text. In this mode, we believe understanding Marcel Proust or Fyodor Dostoyevsky may help us come to a deeper understanding of Marcel, the narrator of <i>In Search of Lost Time</i>, or Raskolnikov, the protagonist of <i>Crime and Punishment</i>. But if we put aside context, labeling it as a potential artifice, and then bring Barthes into conversation with Gaston Bachelard (who in his last significant work, <i>The Poetics of Reverie</i> writes critically of the wedding of phenomenology and poetics.), we emerge with a new meta-interpretation. This new interpretation is light-years away from the earlier, broader definitions of philosophers like Wilhelm Dilthey, who widened discourse on hermeneutics by expanding it to try to account for objective experience and expression.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The interpretive paths available are now infinite: this is where the poetic quality shifts from the literature, the text itself, to the act of interpretation. Tone and style become as essential as reference or analysis. Interpretations of contemporary literary works by a variety of writers ranging from Harold Bloom to Jean Baudrillard can be as interesting, if not more so, than the actual texts that they write about. These impassioned, brilliant analysts weave new visions of their disembodied sources, improving, and layering the ongoing discourse for any philosophical text deemed worthy of such poetic interpretation. Less enthusiastic interpretive work can feel marginal and parenthetical – more of a meager summation than a meticulous elucidation. More traditional byline and autobiographical interpretations are operating on a shoestring in comparison to the boundless possibilities offered by the belief attributions of interpretative indeterminacy. Literary indeterminacy -- like heteroglossia within a text -- fosters limitless plurality of interpretation<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_Hlk481512498">. <o:p></o:p></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Barthes, Roland. <i>Image, Music, Text. </i>Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Jonathan Hoel is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Persuasion and Coercion<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Crito<i> and the Social Contract<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Brett Belcastro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Throughout the Platonic dialogues, Socrates maintains that education is best when it directs the student towards persuasion by the best argument. In the <i>Crito</i>, Socrates employs this principle in deciding whether or not to escape the Athenian state which has imprisoned him and sentenced him to death, judging his actions by the arguments which support them. On the strength of the disjunctive premise that he must either persuade the state or submit to its judgment, Socrates concludes that he has failed in persuasion and must therefore submit to the sentence of death. Socrates does succeed in persuading Crito that his passivity is the best possible course of action, but here I will<sup>1</sup> attempt to reveal how Socrates' argument fails by any realistic standard of the individual's relationship to the state. Socratic pacifism is not a tenable position today, nor was it tenable when Plato wrote the <i>Crito</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">This argument begins when Socrates forces Crito to admit that “one must never do wrong,” even in return for wrongdoing (49b). From this assertion, it follows that one must not inflict injury on anyone (49c-d), as doing so would constitute an instance of wrongdoing. Socrates adds to these premises that one must act to fulfill one's agreements with others concerning what is just (49e). Reasoning that he stands to inflict harm upon the system of Athenian justice by undermining its authority (50b), and insofar as he must fulfill the agreement he has made with Athens concerning justice, Socrates concludes that it would be both harmful and unjust to himself and to Athens to flee the prison. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">That one must never do wrong, and that one must honor agreements concerning justice, both seem to be fairly innocuous premises. But the manner in which Socrates applies these principles to Athens itself leaves the most room for error. At 50a he clearly identifies those who would suffer if he were to undermine the authority of the Athenian courts: those who benefit from its attempts to administer justice through law. Speaking for the city, Socrates asks “do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the verdicts of its courts have no force but are nullified...by private individuals?” (50b) Crito eagerly points out that the verdict of the court, in Socrates' case, was egregiously unjust, to which Socrates replies (in the voice of the city): “Was that the agreement between us...or was it to respect the judgments that the city came to?” (50c). Socrates goes on to indicate that the system of justice easily left room for him to leave if he did not agree with its precepts (51d), that it was his own fault that he set the penalty so harshly (52c-d), and that, before finally submitting to the city's demands, the city does grant him the opportunity to persuade it as to the true nature of justice (51b).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">On the strength of the agreement between citizen and state it appears that Socrates follows a correct line of reasoning straight from his original principles to the doleful conclusion of his sentence. But the strength of this agreement remains in question. What is it that justifies the existence of a basic social contract between Socrates and Athens? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">There appear to be two basic considerations. The first is in the administration of justice: in the agreement which Socrates refers to at 50c, individuals treat the state as a kind of market that levels the field between various parties who would otherwise resort to violence. If groups of individuals willingly choose this system of justice without coercion, then it is also innocuous. But the second consideration, which Socrates indicates at 54b, reveals the true nature of the relationship between most real citizens and their state institutions: “It is impious to bring violence against your mother or father, it is much more so to use it against your country.” The implication is that the state has raised and educated Socrates, that the benefit it bestows upon him by sustaining him throughout his life creates a series of obligations to the state. This is, at bottom, a base and unjustified compulsion which amounts to the same kind of harm against the individual that Socrates experienced (and rejected through further civil disobedience) at the hands of the thirty tyrants. Individuals have no choice over their place of birth, and the mere fact of their continued survival does not justify their subservience to the state. A social contract actually exists between equal individuals who perform real actions, not in an asymmetrical relationship between an individual and a set of abstract principles. What does it even mean to have an obligation to an intangible set of state policies absent any human persons? The actual survival of persons born in any state is not dependent upon the organization of the state's laws, but the actions of individuals which contribute directly to the well-being of that individual. It may be that the institutions facilitate the actions which individuals take, but if a state ever attempts to transcend the relationships which exist between individuals and reify itself as an institution which causes and maintains those relationships, then it has become a force of mere compulsion and itself abandoned the agreement concerning justice which Socrates concerns himself with. It is possible to conclude from this argument that the burden of proof lies on the nation state to justify its existence through the use of force. <br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">Did the citizens of Athens actually exercise a meaningful degree of choice in the administration of justice? If Athens, like other states, essentially compels its citizens to accept its system of justice, it doesn't appear that it can meaningfully tell its citizens to submit to unjust demands to support the continued existence of that state, only of other individuals. Even in Socrates' time, it may have been entirely right to challenge state institutions by undermining their authority when their administration of force fails to produce justice, or produces it only on the state’s terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Plato, “Crito.” <i>Five Dialogues</i>. Trans. G.M.A. Grube. Hackett: Cambridge, 1981. Print. </span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Brett Belcastro is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";">The Psychoanalytic Construction of Gender<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Matthew J. Luz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">While it is currently fashionable to reject Sigmund Freud’s theories, classifying them as unscientific, overly reductive, or unreasonably obsessed with sex (1), self-proclaimed Neo-Freudian Karen Horney takes a nuanced approach, reinterpreting Freud’s concepts of penis envy, female masochism, and the Oedipus complex as socially-constructed gendered power-relations instead of interpreting them literally. In doing this, she demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Freud’s theories, shedding light on the outdated and male biased descriptions of his controversial concepts, later facilitating the intellectual feminist movement against traditional psychoanalysis, where the aim is to explain how men and women see and experience the ways in which gender is constructed. By dismissing Freud’s theory as incorrect and demonstrating an attitude, like “Freud was wrong, so why is he worth studying,” we are committing a great atrocity, for his writings inspired great work in the sector that is feminist philosophy.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Freud’s psychosexual theory, critiqued for being phallocentric by feminists (2), introduces an overt, explicit male bias into his theoretical explanation of childhood development. Feminists continue to advertise Freud as “not just phallocentric but misogynist; who was not just wrong about women because of male bias but wrong because of his own fundamental sexism” (3). Feminists portray Freud as a misogynist on the basis of his reductively biological instinct perspective on psychosexual development as his way to explain the differences between biological males and females; Freud’s perspective on sexual determinism perpetuates the widely-criticized derogatory slogan “anatomy is autonomy.” Some of Freud’s theories are known to offend feminists, for the possibility of feminine autonomy in Freud’s model appears impossible. Autonomy is the result of determinism; the anatomical possession of the phallus grants the male privilege invisible to the naked eye. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The phallus is the fundamental basis for male privilege, and since the woman lacks this anatomical feature, she experiences distress, resents her mother as a child, and identifies (4) with her father; Freud’s depiction of the female Oedipus complex explains this envy towards men and it is from this that he develops the penis envy phenomenon (5). Feminists also charge Freud with sexism for his deliberate inattentiveness towards the feminine psychology and the female in general; his writings, case studies, and the like are masculinized, and his theories are rooted in universal biological determinism. Freud seals the gender gap, concluding that it is biological sex which determines gender, which in turn, determines social role. The phallus is a predetermined and gendered superiority complex further dividing the genders and enforcing a gender binary, whereas Horney critiques Freud’s biological interpretation of the phallus, substituting reductive biology for symbolism. Horney’s interpretation of the phallus is as a lifelong quest for autonomy which is separate from the physical possession of the phallus. In other words, Horney’s reinterpretation is opportunistic of women, not deterministic of gendered role based on anatomy.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Horney’s reinterpretation of the phallus is as a continuous lifelong quest where the woman takes steps towards developing her own autonomy, a lifelong fight for personal freedom denied to the woman who lives in a patriarchal society. Where Horney believes the woman journeys for the symbolic phallus, Freud believes the woman desires the possession of the male’s genitalia (6). Freud terms the woman’s innate jealousy over the male phallus penis envy, which Horney agrees women do possess; however, there are varying degrees to which penis envy occurs, for example: </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">penis envy is presumed to manifest itself in the behavior of the ‘castrating female’ – ambitious, competitive, seeking to dominate and humiliate men. Tendencies towards dictatorial power and egocentric ambition, Horney noted, are characteristics of neurotic men as well as neurotic women (7).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Horney believes all women experience penis envy and that it is healthy and normal to some degree, however, the woman is not upset at her anatomical lack of the phallic organ, but by the symbolic entity that is the phallus. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">So if the woman is to liberate herself from her predetermined gender role, she must resist the prescriptive behaviors society allots her to engage in. Horney’s reinterpretation of Freud’s concepts led to the attack of the nuclear family and liberation of female gender normative behaviors. Horney’s work contributed greatly to the anti-Freudian movements in the 1920’s and later after the World War II era when women were forced back into the house. While she took Freud very seriously in order to correct his work, she did so wisely, for remaining dismissive is an attitude only immature philosophers have.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">While Freud’s biological explanation of psychosexual development unnecessarily discriminates on the basis of biological sex, Horney believes environmental influences serve as a better explanation of development; her interpretation of the phallus sheds light on the woman’s feelings of female inferiority. Although Horney claims that Freud’s model demonstrates a male bias, she labels herself a Neo-Freudian (8), adopting many of Freud’s concepts and integrates them into her writings. While some continue to critique Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the field of “psychoanalysis in fact continues to be one of the few of our cultural institutions which does not professionally discriminate against women, and in which they could even be said to predominate” (9). We cannot dismiss Freud’s highly controversial and offensive concepts, for they contributed to many thinkers’ ideas and theoretical models of personality development. Some psychologists continue to use Freud’s better-developed practices, like free association and dream analysis, and believe Freud’s work is detrimental to the progression of the field today. Many great minds like Karen Horney, Erik Erikson, and Carl Jung drew many theoretical implications from Freud’s works and used his ideas as groundworks to develop their own theories of personality development.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1. Crews, Frederick C. "Freud: What's Left?" The New York Review of Books. NY Times, 23 Feb. 2017. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">2. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, & Wexler, Laura. “On Psychoanalysis and Feminism.’” Social Research 59.2 (1992). Web. 24 Feb. 2017.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">3. Ibid., 455.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">4. Identification is the Freudian defense mechanism where one who experiences the anxiety emulates the behaviors of a person who they perceive as threatening in order to alleviate anxiety. This idea originated from the Oedipus complex.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">5. Ryckman, R. M. Theories of Personality. India: Wadsworth, 2013. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">6. Freud, Sigmund. The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume VII (1901-5): A Case of Hysteria, Three Essays on Sexuality, and Other Works. Toronto: The Hogarth Press Limited, 1953. Print.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">7. Stone, Judson T. “The Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis.” Science & Society 10.1 (1946). Web. 24 Feb. 2017, 34.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">8. Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">9. Rose, Jacqueline. “Femininity and Its Discontents.” Feminist Review 14.1 (1983). Web. 21 Feb. 2017. 6.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Matt Luz is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-84881834045603387612016-05-15T08:30:00.001-04:002016-05-21T14:02:18.451-04:00Volume 22.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "castellar" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Castellar;">THESIS XII</span></i></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "mistral"; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1>
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<span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;">Volume 22 • Number 1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "symbol"; font-size: 12pt;">Ó</span><span style="font-family: "ar julian"; font-size: 12pt;"> May, 2016</span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Matt Silliman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Is-Ought
Non-Problem </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">David Kenneth Braden-Johnson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Problem with the
Is-Ought Non-Problem<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Reply to Silliman <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Gerol Petruzella<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Must Ought Imply Can?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Reply to Vranas<i> </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Paul Nnodim<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Utilitarian Dilemmas
in the Literature of<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Scapegoats</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Brett Belcastro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Reasoning and Intelligence</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Matt Luz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">On the Formulation of
Successful </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Ad
Baculum<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Arguments</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">J. Stanley Yake<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Friends</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Is-Ought
Non-Problem<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Matt Silliman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">With
famous and characteristic irony, Hume lampoons a particular form of reasoning:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“In every system of morality, which
I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for
some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God,
or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d
to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not,
I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought
not. This change is imperceptible, but is, however, of the last consequence.
For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation,
‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time
that a reason shou’d be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how
this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different
from it.” (A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. III, pt. 1, sect. 1)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I will
offer a brace of arguments to suggest that, while formally problematic in
certain highly artificial or abstract examples, such reasoning is quite natural
and, interpreted with a modicum of charity, seldom if ever fallacious in
itself. Taken together, I think these arguments give us good grounds for not
worrying much about Hume’s problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">(1)</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> My first argument rests on the observation
there is robust, though tacit, morally normative content, properly and
naturally understood, embedded in most ordinary language of human consequence
(including Hume’s “…observations concerning human affairs…” above). Take the
following argument: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> 1. Person X is person Y’s mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> 2. Therefore, Person Y has
obligations (of gratitude, respect,
patience, etc.) toward person X.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Here a
merely factual premise yields a strong inductive, and morally normative,
conclusion without fallacy, since the term ‘mother’ describes a complex
biological, affective, and normatively charged relationship out of which such
obligations almost always flow. We could, if we chose, treat it as enthymemic,
and render it deductively valid by supplying the missing premise: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> 1’ All persons have obligations
toward their mothers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">To do this
risks unsoundness, however, for we might well identify at least a single
counterexample (a particularly heinous mother, who actually tried and failed to
murder person Y at birth, and has done everything else in her power to
undermine person Y’s subsequent life). This singular example, however rare in
real life, falsifies the categorical supplied premise. Better I think to treat
the original argument as a very strong induction. It becomes cogent if we
individuate the first premise (say that I am person Y and my mother is person
X), without the need for supplied premises. Of someone who refuses to accept
it, we might well say that she simply fails to understand the actual
significance of the term ‘mother’ as we use it in normal human discourse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">(2)</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> My second argument for deriving <i>ought-</i>statements<i> </i>from <i>is-</i>statements
begins by observing a tacit normativity in the selection of premises from among
an indefinite field of potentially salient facts. My reasoning looks like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1. There is an effectively unlimited
number of facts (articulable
states of affairs)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">2. A nontrivially large subset of
these facts is potentially
salient in reasoning toward any substantive
conclusion of human concern. (sub-conclusion)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">3. A reasoner must bring
perceptivity and judgment to bear on
the process of selecting among potentially salient facts to employ as premises
in an argument of human concern.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">4. Perceptivity and judgment are
irreducibly laced with normativity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">5. Therefore, all substantive
reasoning of human concern has an
irreducibly normative component.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">One may
well object here that I have here conflated epistemological with moral
normativity, and thus that my argument turns on an equivocation. I plead not
guilty, on the grounds that (at least) when a matter is consequential to
humans, the epistemological process by which we determine the salience or
relevance of facts is itself imbued with at least some moral normativity.
Perhaps developing the Pythagorean Theorem was an epistemically pure process,
but as soon as we employ it to design a building, which might (if our
calculations are careless) collapse and injure someone, moral significance has
entered the room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I argue,
then, that determination of salience is a normative process in the relevant
sense, and irreducibly so. A full spelling-out of the criteria by which we
select among possible facts plausibly yields robust (if tacit) premises
expressing normativity – <i>ought</i>-statements
that will not go away, and without which the argument itself is pointless. Of
course, if any of the operative terms are of the type in my first example
(e.g.: ‘mother’), this is fairly obvious, but I hope I have shown that it is
subtly the case even in apparently purely factual examples.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Here is
another example of the sort of reasoning Hume finds “altogether inconceivable”
(though I am not certain that word means precisely what he thinks it does): <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">1) This rock is crumbly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">2) (therefore) We ought not to climb
on this rock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This
argument might seem to Hume to require some tacit premises (to the effect that
crumbly rock can be dangerous, that one ought not take unnecessary risks,
etc.). But no one in a context where this would be a normal thing to say would
fail to understand the reasoning on offer. There are of course many other
potential premises which are evidently not germane – that the sun is 93 million
miles away, for example – but quite a few others nearer to hand about which it
is not so easy to say. The fact that my mother has an exaggerated fear of
injuries from falling, in response perhaps to a childhood trauma, and thus that
she will be excessively worried about my taking risks with this crumbly rock,
may or may not be a relevant fact in my calculation of what I ought to do in
this circumstance. How heavily should I weight the fact of my mother’s fears in
this deliberation? The difficulty (though not, I think, impossibility) of
answering this question illustrates just the sort of deliberative judgment that
imbues almost all apparent pure-fact reasoning with irreducible normativity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">David
Braden-Johnson raises a challenge to what I have said so far, on the grounds
that Hume’s concern is only with deductive arguments, so my inductive treatment
of the argument about motherhood would be beside the point. But Hume himself
rejects induction altogether as an instance of reason. He views what we call
induction as belief based on past experience which (since reason gives no
guarantee that the future will resemble the past) is not sanctioned by reason
at all. Perhaps this is a merely antiquarian point, since Hume is most probably
mistaken about induction. It does, however, sharpen Hume’s position: on his
account, no genuine (i.e.: deductive) reasoning process can get us from purely
descriptive premises to prescriptive conclusions. I contend that this may be
true in the abstract, but as there are no “purely descriptive” premises
“concerning human affairs,” it is a moot and uninteresting point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I intend
my second argument above to show, not that Hume is mistaken about <i>pure</i> deduction, supposing there is such
a thing, but that the question is moot in practice. By the definition of
deduction, nothing can emerge in the conclusion that was not already contained
in the premises, so unless there are at least tacitly normative elements in the
premises, a normative conclusion will be invalid. Fair enough. I contend,
however, that due to the irreducibly normative process of determining the
salience of premises, selected from an indefinitely large pool of potentially
salient facts, the requisite normative background already tacitly infects the premises
of any interesting argument.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">To
illustrate by analogy, consider early-modern claims of scientific research to
be free of extra-scientific values. Biologists, for example, presented
themselves as simply studying the world of life that was before them, answering
the questions that nature posed (“carving nature at its joints,” a carnivorous
image from Plato’s <i>Phaedrus</i> much
beloved by Roger Bacon). Professional training effectively determined,
paradigmatically, what sorts of questions and research techniques would receive
support and approval within the biology community. Such selectivity is at once
inevitable and a principal reason for the success of the discipline as a
science, lending it the specialization and focus to make progress. Equally
inevitable, however, is the exclusion of legitimate biological questions that
lie too far outside the paradigm shared by the community. Consider, for
example, Harvard biologist Ruth Hubbard’s remarkable work on the
historical/sociological/biological reasons for male-female size difference in
modern humans – a question that never came up (it was taken, wrongly as we now
know, as a biological given, not as a question in need of explanation) when all
prominent professors of biology were men. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">My point
is not to criticize science – such systematic focus on some questions to the
exclusion of others is both necessary and salutary for the process of
scientific inquiry – though it is equally healthy and indispensable that it
learns to listen to those affected or neglected by its exclusions. I only
indicate by way of illustration the serious normative import of biology’s
process of selecting methods and questions, and hence of its reasoning about
them. Traditional biology’s deductions may have been valid, but they were only notionally
free of humanly consequential normative content.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Matt Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">_______________________</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Problem with
the Is-Ought Non-Problem<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Reply
to Silliman<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">David Kenneth Braden-Johnson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Against (most
interpretations of) Hume, Matt Silliman offers two arguments “for deriving
ought-statements from is-statements,” or, in the common parlance of the debate<i>, </i>bridging the is-ought gap. He claims that reasoning in this fashion is
“quite natural” and “seldom if ever fallacious in itself.” In the end, he advises us not “to worry too
much about Hume’s problem.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">I think there is much to worry about here, not the least of which is the
prospect of falling silent before those who would fallaciously derive ethical
justifications from convention, God’s will, popularity, the “nature of things,”
and the like. But my more immediate
worry is that Silliman fails to grasp the axiomatic status of “Hume’s problem,”
and so unwittingly employs the very position he condemns. I suggest, therefore, that both of Silliman’s
arguments fail, and for the same reason: by insisting on the “tacit
normativity” of premises designed to provide support for “any interesting
argument,” each assumes (<i>with </i>Hume)
the very unbridgeable gap he hopes to traverse or ignore.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[1]</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In addition, there is a permanent tension at the heart of Silliman’s
analysis: it remains unclear whether he intends to offer counterexamples to
Hume (that is, “non-fallaciously” bridge the is-ought gap), or merely to
eliminate the gap from all or most human discourse. At any rate, in what follows, I will argue
that he fails to accomplish the former and ought not to pursue the latter.</span></div>
</div>
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<b><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
First Argument<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Silliman’s first argument rests on the observation that the premises of
“any interesting argument” contain “tacit, normative content” providing an
inferential bridge to a “normative conclusion without fallacy.” He provides this example:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">1. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Person X is
person Y’s mother.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. Therefore, person Y has
obligations toward person X.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Being a mother, he writes, is a “normatively charged relationship” which
typically involves obligations. The
tacit normative content emerges as we parse the term “mother,” and can be made
explicit in the following way:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A1’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="background-color: white; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">1. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Person X is person Y’s
mother.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. All persons have
obligations to their mothers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">3. Therefore, person Y has
obligations to person X.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Recognizing the deductive and potentially unsound character of A1’
(given the remote possibility of a mother toward whom no one has obligations),
Silliman suggests that we would be on stronger ground to interpret A1
inductively and with reference to a specific person, as in the following
version:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A1’’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">1. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Y is Matt’s mother.</span><br />
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. Therefore, Matt has
obligations to Y.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">But this presents us with a puzzle.
A1’’ remains deductive in tone and (beyond those familiar with the
particulars of Matt’s life), logically indistinguishable from A1. The assumption is, of course, that Matt has
an obligation-saturated relationship to his mother, supplying the “tacit
normativity” of premise #1 made explicit in a new premise #2:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A1’’’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">1. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Y is Matt’s
mother.</span><br />
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. Matt has
obligations to his mother.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">3. Therefore,
Matt has obligations to his mother.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">But A1’’’ is both deductive and circular, effectively eliminating
premise #1, the purported source of the argument’s “tacit normativity.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Alternatively, rephrasing A1’’’ as an induction, we have:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A1’’’’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">1. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Y is Matt’s
mother.</span><br />
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. Most persons
have obligations to their mothers.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">3. Therefore,
Matt probably has obligations to his mother.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">While A1’’’’ avoids overt circularity and deduction, the argument (like
A1’’’ before it) fails to deliver the promised goods; that is, provide us with
“an argument for deriving ought-statements from is-statements.” (Though I will not pursue the issue further here, the inference fails the test of ethical non-vacuity as well; see footnote 1). It is, plainly enough, an argument that
(fallibly, inductively) derives an ought statement from another ought
statement. Bridging is and ought is,
apparently, impossible in the absence of an ought on both sides of the bridge,
whether that structure is inductive or deductive.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">[2</span></span></span></span></a><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">But now our metaphor has lost all sense,
since the bridge was invoked in the first instance as a means of getting from
exclusively is-statements to an ought-statement, while no bridge is required to
infer ought-claims from a mix of claims containing, tacitly or explicitly,
other ought-claims.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The
Second Argument<o:p></o:p></span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Silliman’s second argument for bridging the gap is related to, but somewhat distinct from, the first in which the tacit normativity of the premise(s)
eliminated the need for a bridge (and so validated Hume’s view). Now Silliman locates the normativity not
(merely) in the premises themselves, but in the very <i>selection</i> of premises. The
basic idea is that the “epistemological process by which we determine the
salience or relevance of facts is itself imbued with at least some moral
normativity.” He proffers on this basis that “all substantive reasoning of
human concern has an irreducibly normative component.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Unfortunately, this claim is equivocal between (a) seeing the <i>process of selecting premises</i> as essentially normative (in any "interesting" context) and (b) seeing the <i>logical
functioning of premises in an argument</i> as essentially normative. At times Silliman seems to be suggesting
both; yet in the context of “non-fallaciously <i>deriving</i> ought-statements from is-statements,” we rightly concern
ourselves exclusively with the latter.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[3]</span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white;"> Furthermore, the normativity of (a) is logically distinct from (b). To see this is so, we need only reflect momentarily on the very example Silliman provides of the "epistemically pure" development of the (no doubt interesting and substantive) Pythagorean theorem. The typical normative epistemic imperatives
that determine the salience or relevance of facts (be careful, be systematic,
avoid contradiction, etc.) that govern argument construction and direct our
inquiries have no bearing on the normativity of the argument or its components. That is, no amount of selectivity, focus, bias, salience, or any other purportedly normative characteristic of the process of argument formation, has any determinative impact on the normativity of the argument. Indeed, Silliman seems to admit as much as he claims that nomativity associated with the theorem enters the inferential scene only as we apply it, with the proper care of course, when “designing
a building." That we
generally care about the safety of homes is undeniable, as is the value we
place on consistency and deductive certainty, when we claim that, for any right
triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of
the other two sides.</span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> That we ought to be careful when arguing, that the contextual application of arguments in science and elsewhere can be for good or ill, or that we generally care about the content <i>and</i>
construction <i>and </i>application of our arguments, are all equally obvious. </span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Putting aside these equivocations, have we any reason to suppose that the normativity of argument construction produces or
amounts to a normativity of content (reflected in at least one premise) that
might serve to bridge the inferential gap between is and ought? Silliman offers but one brief example:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A2</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">1. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">This rock is
crumbly.</span><br />
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. Therefore, we
ought not to climb on this rock.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">He suggests that, to any clear-headed reader, the choice of premise #1
has been directed by some interested party, and so, despite all appearances to
the contrary, is not a “pure fact.” Its
impurity bespeaks its (tacit) normativity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Note that what Silliman claims is true not of the premise, but of the
argument as a whole understood as a kind of cryptic, hypothetical imperative
(“If you want to remain safe, you ought not to climb on unsafe rocks!”). Let us agree that premise #1 either is or is
not a “pure fact.” If it is not -- if it
tacitly contains some element of normativity -- then Hume’s is-ought gap
remains untouched as we proceed validly to infer an ought from an ought. Hume's gap is bridged only where the premise
set remains exclusively empirical or “pure.” I will take up below Silliman’s apparent suggestion that we (as in A1
and its progeny above) argue for premise #1’s contextual or holistic impurity
in light of the intentions of its author. Just now, let us assume that it remains a pure,
empirical, non-normative fact. Only in
that way might we offer a counterexample to Hume. The key, as Silliman suggests, is in the
selection process. Was this pure fact
chosen for some interested reason? No
doubt it was, <i>as a rational means to
secure the intended end</i> – a safe climb.
I reconstruct the fuller argument as follows:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A2’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; text-indent: -0.25in;">1. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">This rock is
crumbly.</span><br />
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">2. Crumbly rocks are unsafe for climbing.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">3. We want to be
safe.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; text-indent: -0.25in;">4. Therefore, we
ought not to climb on this rock.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Premise #2 links crumbliness with lack of safety, and #3 introduces our
desire to find a safe place to climb.
Note that all three premises remain purely descriptive; in particular,
#1 remains a “pure fact,” despite its role in making the conclusion seem attractive. So, while no tacit normativity infects the
premise set, the explicit normativity of the conclusion seems to gather some
kind of support from the purely empirical premises. Have we, in A2’, finally discovered a viable
is-ought bridge? Not at all. As it stands, the inference is clearly invalid,
since none of the premises assert or (individually or collectively) entail “one
ought not to climb on the rock.” The
normative force of the conclusion is parasitic, not on any kind of “tacit
normativity” of the premises (there is none), but on the <i>unstated</i> <i>rationality</i> of
choosing an effective means to one’s desired ends (something that is missing
from, and the source of the invalidity of, A2’). That is, this is not an instance of moral
reasoning at all, but an example of prudential reasoning from a hypothetical
desired end to an effective means of securing that end: desiring, or valuing X,
and seeing Y as the best or only means of acquiring X, I “ought” to do Y. If you want to be healthy, you should eat your
vegetables. If you want a safe climb, <i>and if you ought to do whatever keeps you
safe</i>, then you should stay off those rocks: if both A and B then C. The
conclusion has binding normative content only for those who accept the
italicized antecedent of the conditional claim. And, once we do, we commit
ourselves to an explicitly normative premise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Once again, Silliman has not been able to forge a successful inferential
bridge from is to ought. A command or
bit of prudential reasoning is not an argument.
A2, therefore, is either a hypothetical imperative (“you ought to do Y
if you want X”) dressed up to look like an inference, or an inference with an
explicitly normative premise. I began
with the suggestion that Silliman’s arguments vacillate between <i>bridging</i> and <i>denying the importance</i> <i>of</i>
Hume’s gap, and that neither approach held out much promise. I hope to have shown that A1 and A2 and their
extensions either assume, <i>along with </i>Hume,
an unbridgeable gap or substitute commands, explanations, contextual applications, or a notion of
means-end rationality for arguments.
Given the axiological nature of the is-ought gap when applied to logical
derivations, Hume’s problem is our problem, too.</span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>Thanks to Nicole K. Braden-Johnson for her many helpful comments and suggestions.</i></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">References<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Guevara, D. (2008). “Rebutting Formally Valid Counterexamples to the Humean
“Is-Ought” Dictum.” <i>Synthese, 164, 1.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Johnson, D. K. (1995). “The Ought-Is Question: Discovering the Modern in Postmodernism.” <i>Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, 14, 4.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Peirce, C. (1998). <i>The
Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical
Writings, Volume 2</i>. Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Plutynsky, Anya. (2011). “Four Problems of Abduction: A Brief History.”</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> <i><span style="background: white;">HOPOS: The
Journal of the International Society
for the History of Philosophy of Science, 1.</span></i><span style="background: white;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Prior, A. N. (1960). “The Autonomy of Ethics.” <i>Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 38</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">David Kenneth
Braden-Johnson teaches philosophy at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">_______________________</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Must Ought Imply
Can?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A
Response to Vranas<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Gerol Petruzella<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Introduction<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Is morality too demanding - "requiring us to do
things that we literally cannot do, things that go beyond our abilities"?
Peter Vranas finds this claim "hard to swallow" (Vranas 197) and so
defends a version of the ought-implies-can principle, OIC, against several
objections, including arguments based upon putative counterexamples, as well as
conceptual arguments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Vranas does excellent work in building definitional
clarity into his treatment of the issue. He articulates OIC as synchronic and
time-indexed, since its elements (obligations, abilities, opportunities) are,
an analysis which seems right to me. He offers a clear deductive argument
supporting OIC:</span><br />
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">(P1)</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">
Obligations "correspond" to reasons for action: If an agent has an obligation to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">, then the agent
has a reason to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.</span><br />
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">(P2)</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">
Reasons for action "correspond" to potential actions: If an agent has a reason to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">, then </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">-ing is a potential action of the agent.</span><br />
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">(P3)</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">
Potential actions "correspond" to ability plus opportunity: If </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">-ing is a
potential action of an agent,
then the agent can </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Thus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">(OIC)</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">
Obligations "correspond" to ability plus opportunity: If an agent (S at a given time t) has an (objective, <i>pro tanto</i>) obligation to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">, then
the agent (at that time) can
(i.e., has both the ability and the opportunity
to) </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Vranas also does much good work in "clearing the
field", deftly undercutting several purported grounds for attacking OIC -
legal arguments (199), psychological arguments about obligations to feel (174),
arguments based upon natural-language confusions of the sense of
"ought" (178), exotic hypotheticals involving moral luck (179), and
arguments which fail to realize that the grounds for rejecting OIC are also
grounds for rejecting the ought-implies-logically-possible principle (187).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">For all his rigor in defining and addressing the problem,
however, Vranas does not apply the same standard of linguistic precision to a
crucial relation in his core argument - "corresponding to". In his
primary expression of the argument (171-172), he appears to define
"correspondence" in terms of deductive entailment (as expressed in
if-then statements). [Compare Plato's difficulty with <i>metechein</i>, to
partake of.] I believe this leads Vranas into difficulties which his article
leaves unaddressed, and which leave the door open for continued critique of
OIC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">After identifying Vranas's argumentative flaw, I will
offer an argument against OIC which relies on a simple, real-world
counterexample, rather than exotic thought experiment scenarios involving
brainwave monitors, morally confused Nazis, superhuman typists, or strangling
canaries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Vranas's Error</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">By implicitly defining "corresponding to" as
logical entailment, Vranas necessarily commits himself to the deductive
consequences of his premises as stated. Unfortunately, this commitment makes
his accounts of potential, reasons for action, and ability too restrictive to
account for certain real-world counterexamples.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Specifically, I want to take a closer look at Vranas'
(P2). Vranas himself recognizes this premise as a likely locus of contention
(173), but believes that he has mustered sufficient argumentative merit to
defend it. I disagree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">First, let's express (P2) formally for purposes of
clarity. The premise</span><br />
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">(P2)
Reasons for action "correspond" to potential
actions: If an agent has a reason to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">, then </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">-ing is a potential action of the agent</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">can be simplified to</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">If R,
then P</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">or</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">All R
are P.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Of course, then, the logically equivalent forms are
equally true:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Contrapositive:
All non-P are non-R.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Obverse:
No R are non-P.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Some Moral
Intuitions<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Now, let's consider two intuitions regarding moral agency
and human potential. A common, though unstated, intuition may be that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">(G1) The
scope of human action is no greater than
the scope of human potential (or, All A are P).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">This seems plausible. Surely, it would be nonsensical to
claim that human acts could somehow extend beyond humans' own capacities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">We also presume that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">(G2) The
scope of moral responsibility extends to
at least some </span><i style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif;">consequences</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> of human
action (or, Some C are R).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">That is, we can properly ascribe moral responsibility to
not only the immediate acts which human agents perform, but also (in at least
some cases) to the consequences of those acts, particularly when the agent acts
intentionally and with foreknowledge of those consequences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Now, what is interesting about (G1) is that it is false,
or at least in need of clarification. Human agents are in many cases capable of
engineering causal chains leveraging ordinary human capacities or potentials to
cause "superhuman" effects. For example, I have the (ordinary human)
capacity to break a small glass vial by dropping it to the pavement on a New
York City sidewalk; depending upon the contents of that vial, my action (which,
again, itself falls well within the scope of ordinary human potential) has the
direct effect of killing billions of humans, an effect which far exceeds
ordinary human potential, but for which nevertheless I am morally responsible. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">(G2) prompts us to realize that it is not just that I am
morally responsible (and blameworthy) for the act of dropping the vial; I am
also morally responsible for the consequent deaths of billions, even though it
is not within my human potential to kill billions. We live in a world where
humans in the aggregate can act to cause tremendous, morally significant
effects; but given our technologies, such possibilities arise not just in the
aggregate, but for the individual agent. The push of a button can launch a
nuclear firestorm; a computer keystroke can disable communications networks for
entire nations; and so on. While human potential is limited, we have the
creative capacity to place ourselves into causal relations with effects which
are effectively unlimited. At the very least, any adequate account of moral
responsibility must be prepared to account somehow for human moral
responsibility for effects which surpass human potential actions, particularly
when those actions are taken intentionally and with foreknowledge of the
consequences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Let's now compare these intuitions with Vranas's (P2) and
its logical consequences. Again, (P2) states that "if an agent has a
reason to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">, then
</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">-ing is a
potential action of the agent," which we have expressed formally as
"All R are P." If we unpack the contrapositive of this statement into
natural language similar to Vranas's, we see that Vranas is necessarily also
committed to the claim that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">(P2-C)
"If </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">-ing
is not a potential action of an agent,
then the agent does not have a reason to </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">φ</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">How does this stack up with our earlier discussion? </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">It seems that (P2-C) presumes some version of (G1), that
is, that there is some necessary conceptual alignment between the scope of
potential action and the scope of human choice-making.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Vranas's Responses to Agents Becoming Incapacitated</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In 4.2.2 (179), Vranas addresses the scenario in which a
man makes himself unable to fulfill a moral obligation to be in Boston at 9am
to get married by boarding an airplane elsewhere at 8:30am. To maintain his
claim that OIC holds true, Vranas claims that while it is "natural"
to say that the man is blameworthy for failing to show up, strictly speaking,
the man is not blameworthy for violating his obligation to show up, but rather
for violating "the obligation to
avoid doing anything that would make him fail to show up". This is
a curiously convoluted and <i>ad hoc</i> explanation of the involved
obligations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In a similar vein, in 4.2.4 (182), Vranas bites the
bullet and accepts that OIC does entail that people can sometimes get rid of
unwanted obligations, with the "compensatory" understanding that, to
make it more palatable, there are "residual" obligations that
(necessarily?) arise. Such residual obligations are such as to "make up
for" the failure to meet the earlier obligation, but within the
newly-constrained capacities of the agent - being obliged to apologize for
having not shown up for the wedding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In general, Vranas's attempt in 4.2 to account for
situations in which an agent becomes unable to fulfill an obligation falls
short of completeness, as he acknowledges:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">"Admittedly
this does not establish that no cases exist in which the obligation persists
after the inability sets in, but it does shift the burden of proof to those who
would insist that such cases exist." (178)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">I am happy to take up that burden. In the following
section, I describe a realistic case in which a moral obligation persists after
the agent's inability sets in. I argue, therefore, that since such a case does
exist, it is an effective counterexample to OIC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Drunken Pilot Scenario</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero_Flight_311"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Aero
Flight 311</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">, also known as the Kvevlax disaster, was a crash in 1961
which resulted in the deaths of 25 people on board a domestic passenger flight
in Finland (Wikipedia). Investigation found that the airplane had been
airworthy, but autopsies revealed that the captain, Lars Hattinen, had a blood
alcohol content of 0.20, while his copilot Paavo Halme had a blood alcohol
content of 0.156. It is reasonable to ascribe the crash, and deaths, to the
pilot's and co-pilot's intoxication.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Let us imagine a similar case - well within the realm of
realistic possibility</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[5]</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> - which
allows us to sharpen the focus of certain relevant features to consider the
moral implications of our current discussion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Cathay Pacific Airlines schedules a 15-hour nonstop
flight between San Francisco and Hong Kong. The vast majority of the flight
path is over the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. The pilot and copilot begin
the flight as fully qualified and competent moral agents, taking off from San
Francisco with a full passenger manifest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">At time T0, the beginning of the flight, the pilot and
copilot both have a moral obligation to fly the airplane safely, and they both
have the ability to fulfill that obligation. However, at time T1, about 6 hours
into the flight, both the pilot and the copilot decide to drink large
quantities of alcoholic beverages, such that they are both physiologically
impaired. The blood alcohol content of both individuals exceeds 0.15; the CDC
describes the predictable effects of this level of BAC as "substantial
impairment in vehicle control, attention to driving task, and in necessary
visual and auditory information processing" (</span><a href="http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/bac.html"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/bac.html</span></a><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">). Let
us stipulate that the physiological effects of the alcohol on both pilot and
copilot are the predictable effects.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">By time T2, about 7 hours into the flight, we stipulate
that the pilot and copilot have both become physiologically unable to fulfill
the obligation to fly the airplane safely. The pilot remains conscious but
deeply impaired; the copilot passes out. We further stipulate that no other
individual on board the airplane has any greater ability to fly the airplane
safely. We can bring this about in any number of ways: perhaps the passengers
are all minors, or physically or mentally disabled; or perhaps in their drunken
state the pilot and copilot have locked themselves in the cockpit and broken
the lock mechanism. Feel free to fill in whatever details you like. The plane
carries sufficient fuel to complete the flight under normal circumstances;
however, there is not sufficient fuel to allow the pilot to stay in the air
until he can sober up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Key
Question<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">At time T2, does the pilot have a (current) moral
obligation to fly the airplane safely? Vranas
would say no, since <i>ex hypothesi</i> he no longer has the ability to do so.
He might say that he has some "residual" obligation instead. But in
this situation, what possible residual obligation is available to perform? The
ability to land the plane safely is the same ability as that necessary to fly
the plane safely, and so the pilot cannot "fall back" to an
obligation to perform an emergency landing. We have stipulated <i>ex hypothesi</i>
that no other available moral agent can fly the plane any more safely, and so
he cannot have the obligation to "hand over" the controls to a more
capable individual. To simply step out of the cockpit and leave the plane on
autopilot will, if anything, be more likely to cause harm, and so this course
of action cannot be a residual moral obligation – unlike a drunk driver, the pilot
cannot just “stop driving.” Perhaps Vranas would maintain that the only
remaining moral obligation the pilot owes to the passengers is to offer a
heartfelt apology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Perhaps, following his strategy in dealing with the
wedding scenario, Vranas might claim that while it is "natural" to
say that the pilot is blameworthy for failing to fly safely, strictly speaking,
he is not blameworthy for violating his (past) obligation to fly safely, but
rather for violating "the
obligation to <i>avoid</i> doing anything
that would make him <i>fail</i> to fly
safely". So perhaps, at T2, the pilot is morally culpable for
having failed to avoid making himself incapable, but is not culpable for
failing to fly safely. How realistic is this workaround?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Let’s assume that Vranas is correct, and that at time T2,
the pilot does not have a current moral obligation to fly the airplane safely,
because he does not have the ability to do so. We have stipulated that no other
moral agent has the ability to fly the airplane safely. Therefore, at time T2, <i>no one</i> has a moral obligation to fly the
airplane safely. This seems <i>prima facie </i>strange;
but I would like to figure out why, exactly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">One source of strangeness is perhaps that the moral
weight of obligations is mismatched between the original obligation (which is
to preserve many people’s safety and keep them from dying) and any possible
“compensatory” obligation which one might ascribe at T2 (which is, at most, to
offer regret). Remember, the pilot chose knowingly to incapacitate himself from
performing his obligation; no “compensatory” obligation available to him at T2
seems comparable in seriousness. He seems to have “traded down," releasing
himself from a serious moral obligation in exchange for assuming a less onerous
moral obligation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">A second source of strangeness is that the morally
relevant situation is ongoing – not past, and not time-limited; the situation
persists, with an odd emptiness where the relevant moral agency used to be. In
most ordinary circumstances of moral agency, when agent A is responsible for
act R, our standard assumption is that A’s agency is active so long as R is
ongoing, and so long as R is in effect, A’s responsibility is also in effect.
(If I am responsible for stealing from my grandmother’s bank account, so long
as the theft is ongoing, my moral responsibility continues.) But even when a
situation continues in the sudden absence of the original morally responsible
agent, we presume both that the moral agent has ceased to exist, and the
availability of <i>some</i> moral agent to
pick up the mantle of moral responsibility: if a professor suffers a heart
attack and cannot continue teaching a course, we presume that the college bears
the responsibility to the students to get the course taught. The current
scenario blocks both of these avenues. We are not accustomed to a morally
significant circumstance persisting beyond the agency of the agent who bears
moral responsibility for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Note to Readers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review </span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">is
published biannually as an open forum promoting respectful philosophical
exchanges among students, faculty, alumni, and the public. Submissions reflect a diversity of
disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially
encouraged to participate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Address all
correspondence to: <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Dr. David K.
Braden-Johnson, Editor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Department of
Philosophy, IDS, and Modern Languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Massachusetts
College of Liberal Arts <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">North Adams,
Massachusetts 01247 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Telephone: (413)
662-5448.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email: </span><a href="mailto:d.johnson@mcla.edu"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">d.johnson@mcla.edu</span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Associate Editor:
Dr. Matthew R. Silliman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email: </span><a href="mailto:m.silliman@mcla.edu"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">m.silliman@mcla.edu</span></a><br />
<a href="mailto:m.silliman@mcla.edu"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><br /></span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">A third source of strangeness is that a persistent and
ongoing process of huge moral consequence (life or death of individuals) can be
morally ‘driverless’. The pilot brought about the morally significant
consequence through his action; but he cannot take any action which can undo
the consequence. In such a case, OIC absolves him of the moral responsibility,
and at most, attempts to backfill our moral intuitions with talk of
“compensatory” obligations to account for our intuitions of the pilot’s ongoing
blameworthiness. But this still leaves the core, relevant moral consequence
‘driverless’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Humans can take actions which have consequences which are
irreversible to us. This is not a profound revelation; but we have perhaps not
fully appreciated its implications. The key relevant implication: the
consequences of our actions often escape the boundaries of our capabilities.
And so if our moral responsibilities are capped by the boundaries of our
capabilities, as OIC articulates, we must bite the bullet and acknowledge that,
contrary to our G2 intuition above, our moral responsibilities do not, in fact,
always extend to the consequences of our actions; and that we can “game” the
system of moral responsibility itself, by causing situations for which we know
we cannot properly be held morally responsible (hence blameworthy); situations
in which we will bear some lesser, “compensatory” moral obligation, within our
merely human capacities to fulfil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Many thanks to my colleagues David Braden-Johnson, Paul Nnodim, and Matthew
Silliman for their critical feedback in this ongoing conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Vranas,
Peter B. M. "I Ought, Therefore I Can." <i>Philosophical Studies</i>
136.2 (2007): 167-216. Web.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Wikipedia
contributors. "Aero Flight 311." <i>Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia.</i> 25 Oct. 2015.
Web. 5 May. 2016. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Gerol Petruzella
is the Assistant Director of Academic Technology and teaches philosophy at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">_______________________</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Utilitarian
Dilemmas in the Literature of Scapegoats<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Paul Nnodim<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The scapegoat problem<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">I’m about to take issue with those critics of
classical utilitarianism who employ extreme scapegoat scenarios to demonstrate
inherent weaknesses in the system. Since I’m one of those critics, it appears I
might be, at least tangentially, arguing against myself. But how does one argue
against oneself without intentionally weakening one’s proffered claims? </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Obviously,
in many instances, we do not freely choose our beliefs,
but are socially conditioned to accept them. Our personal beliefs can be predicated on prejudice, sweeping
generalizations, oversimplification, false dilemmas, etc. Thus, it is hardly
surprising to see many of us struggle to grasp the idea behind raising hypothetical objections to our considered
judgements of what is true, plausible, or
morally acceptable. But this is what reflective thinking is all about.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">
However, my goal in this paper is not to celebrate the power of self-criticism
or self-denial, but genuinely to take a closer look at the utilitarian
enterprise and to see if there are compelling reasons for a rethink. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">The term scapegoat possibly
has its origin in the Hebrew word -<span style="background: white;">עֲזָאזֵל</span><i> (Azazel) </i>found in the Pentateuch. <span style="background: white;"><span style="background: white;">The original meaning of Azazel is hard to figure out,
but I’m willing to accept, if only momentarily, William Tyndale’s 1530
translation of the Hebrew Bible. There, he seems to break the term into</span><i style="background: white;"> ez</i><span style="background: white;"> (the goat) and </span><i style="background: white;">azel</i><span style="background: white;"> (that escapes), hence, the [e]scapegoat:</span><i style="background: white;"> “And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord’s lot fell and
offer him for a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell to escape, he
shall set alive before the Lord to reconcile with and to let him go free into
the wilderness.”</i><span style="background: white;"> </span></span></span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[6]</span></span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="background: white;"><span style="background: white;"> The
scapegoat then was a goat upon whose head the priest symbolically placed the
sins of the people before letting the animal escape into the wilderness. This
ritual was part of the Hebrew ceremony of </span><i style="background: white;">Yom
Kippur</i><span style="background: white;"> or the Day of Atonement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[7]</span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Critics of classical utilitarianism often find
unconventional allies among fiction and nonfiction “scapegoat” writers. As
wide-ranging as these storytellers may be in style and scope, they share one
thing in common: Their stories are disconcerting, gruesome, and to the joy of
their philosophical appropriators, anti-utilitarian</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Classical utilitarianism<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Classical utilitarianism is</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> the principle of
“the greatest happiness or good for the greatest number.” Thus, it is</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"> an aggregate-maximizing, hedonistic, and consequentialist
ethics, since it teaches that the end of human conduct is happiness and the discriminating norms for
distinguishing a right behavior from a
wrong one are pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) was perhaps the
earliest scholar to articulate the principles of the doctrine in a more
systematic and coherent manner. </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Utilitarianism as a form of ethics does capture the
imagination of rational individuals. It only
says we all ought to be happy by seeking and maximizing the pleasurable while minimizing the un-pleasurable
or the painful. According to Rawls, “It is natural to think that rationality is
maximizing something and in morals it must be the good. Indeed, it is tempting
to suppose that it is self-evident that things should be arranged so as to lead to the most
good.” </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[8]</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Critics of the system, however, argue that utilitarianism
could permit gross inequalities if such
acts produce the best consequences for the majority of the people. Some of
these detractors cite fictional works, such as Ursula Le Guin’s </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">“The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas,” Edgar Allan
Poe’s </span><i><span style="border: none 1.0pt; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; padding: 0in;">The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket</span></i><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> or a real-life
story, such as the <i>Mignonette</i>,</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[9]</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> to illustrate the utilitarian jeopardy. Here are synopses of the stories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Omelas <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In
Le Guin’s story, for example, <i>Omelas (</i>Salem,
Oregon written backwards<i>)</i> is an exhilarating, quixotic, and
idyllic utopian city: a place distinguished by its grandeur, magnificent
buildings, and fairytale-like summer festivities. At the first glance,
everything seems to work perfectly well
in this city. The inhabitants are happy-go-lucky,
wealthy, and affable. However, a closer look at <i>Omelas</i> reveals an odious incongruity. In the cellar of one of its
buildings lives a malnourished, neglected, and grief-stricken child. This child used to scream for help, but now only
whines, her voice apparently muffled by fatigue and despair. The child sleeps
on her excrement and the sores all over her body have become septic. The cellar
where they keep the unfortunate child is as malodorous as a fetid pile of
garbage. People know about the existence of the woebegone child, but no one
dares to help her; otherwise, as they believe, their good fortunes go with the
wind. Sometimes, a group of <i>Omelas</i>
residents would visit the gruesome cellar to inform themselves about the
child’s fate. Initially, they would feel some disgust.
But as time passes by, they adopt evasive stances to dampen any feelings of
antipathy or any roiling of conscience. If we release the child from the
cellar, they reason, she is already too degraded to know any real joy. She has
been afraid for too long and would not rid herself of fear. Other times, a few,
sensible residents would visit the child and choose not to return home. They
would walk through the main street of the city, pass the city gate, and head
silently to some unknown place. “Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or
woman. …They leave Omelas, they walk
ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back.”</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[10]</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> Since classical utilitarianism seeks to maximize the aggregate utility
(pleasure) of the largest number of people, it would seem morally permissible
to abuse the rights of one innocent child, the scapegoat, for the greater
happiness of the many.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">A
Tale of Two Richards </span></b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In Edgar Allan
Poe’s 1838 novel, <i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of
Nantucket</span></i>, the crew of a ship called <i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Grampus</span></i> find
themselves cast away and starving to death. In
order to survive, they would have to kill one of their members, eat his
flesh and drink his blood. They cast a lot
and it falls on Richard Parker, a former mutineer. They quickly slaughter him and the rest of the crew feeds on his body until
rescue comes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">In what appears to
be one of the most bizarre coincidences in literature, </span><span style="background-color: white; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 1pt none; padding: 0in;">46 years later and more than three decades after
the death of Poe, </span><span style="background-color: white;">a cabin boy, also named Richard Parker, became a
victim of castaway cannibalism. But this time, the story is real. In </span><span style="background-color: white; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 1pt none; padding: 0in;">1884</span><span style="background-color: white;">, an English ship called the </span><i style="background-color: white;">Mignonette
</i><span style="background-color: white; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 1pt none; padding: 0in;">sank in the South Atlantic, possibly en
route to Australia.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> Its four Englishman crew survived treacherous days
and nights at sea on a lifeboat. Within a couple of days, their meager rations
ran out and they were starving to death.
Now, the cabin boy, Richard Parker who
was an orphan had fallen ill. The other crewmen conspired against poor Richard,
murdered him, ate his flesh, and drank his blood.
As they crew was anticipating whom next to kill for food, a passing boat found and rescued them. Upon their return to
England, the men went on trial for murder. Two
of them served minor sentences, while one
even walked away free.</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[11]</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"> As Sandel
notes, the strongest argument for the defense was a utilitarian one: “… given the dire circumstances, it was
necessary to kill one person in order to
save three. Had no one been killed and eaten, all four would likely have died.
Parker weakened and ill, was the logical candidate,
since he would soon have died anyway. … he had no dependents. His death deprived no
one of support and left no grieving wife or children.”<o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">[12]</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The central idea of these stories is founded on a certain
supposition. If we were offered a world in which
the majority is kept enduringly happy on the condition that they deny some
innocent citizens their inalienable rights, would it not be an offensive
conduct?</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Critics of
classical utilitarianism draw on such extreme suppositions to chide the system.
But wouldn’t it be clear to most rational and moral agents, including
utilitarians themselves, that torturing an innocent child or eating a sick
cabin boy to maximize the aggregate pleasure of other people is a bad idea? As a normative ethical
principle, classical utilitarianism may not defend itself successfully against
such critics, since their goal is to show in whatever way possible that the normative standpoint of utilitarianism is
unsound. However, if we were to see classical utilitarianism as an applied
ethical practice, then marginal cases would constitute weak analogies against
it. While the main thrust of normative ethics is to explore, in general, what moral lives we ought to live, applied ethics
concerns itself with the particular instantiations of those “oughts.” We, the
critics, tend to ignore this distinction. </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">(1) Stolnitz, Jerome.
"On the Origins of "Aesthetic Disinterestedness""<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>20.2 (1961): 131-43.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>JSTOR</i>. Web. 12 September, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">(2) </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Zangwill, Nick.
"Aesthetic Judgment."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>. Stanford
University, 28 Feb. 2003. Web. 12 September, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">(3) Slater, Barry H. "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy."<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Aesthetics</i>. N.p., 25 July 2005.
Web. 12 September, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Paul Nnodim teaches philosophy at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">_______________________</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Reasoning and
Intelligence<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Brett Belcastro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">Sentience and other measurements of sufficient intellectual complexity are
the essential foundations for a criteria of moral status (1). This challenges
ethicists to define the observable empirical conditions of sentience, the most
important of which is a demonstrable intelligence. <span style="background: white;">But the identification of intelligence</span> relies on the distinction
between entities which are capable of reasoning and those that are not, and if
reasoning is synonymous with logic, then the distinction becomes impossible and
the project of sentience fails before it can even begin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Traditional definitions of logic often conflate it with
reasoning and inference, as when Patrick Hurley defines logic as “the organized
body of knowledge, or science, that evaluates arguments.” (2) If an inference
represents the movement from premises to conclusion</span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">, then it
appears possible to provide a comprehensive definition of argumentation without
reference to reasoning at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">Is it necessary that an intelligence is also a reasoning agent? A pocket
calculator follows a system of logic, arranges electrical signals to model a
set of beliefs, and makes inferences to produce the output of its equations;
what is to stop an observer from saying that the calculator is properly
intelligent, and on those grounds to consider it for moral status? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">Logicians such as <span style="background: white;">Terence Parsons describe</span>
“reasoning structures,<span style="background: white;">” (3) </span>spaces within
which inferences occur. This structure follows the evolution of inferences from
one to the next like the points that form a geometric line. F<span style="background: white;">or Parsons, reasoning</span> is the series of
relationships which inferences have to each other, and at all times a reasoning
agent is located at some point on the line of inference. This is similar to
Gilbert <span style="background: white;">Harman's assertion that reasoning is
“the process of modifying antecedent beliefs and intentions.” (4) A pocket calculator, though capable of using
inferences to produce output, is not capable of cognizing its inferences, only
of repeating them: 2 + 2 = 4 + 2 = 6 + 2 = 8 …</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">An implication of Parsons' criteria is that a more sophisticated
calculator could occupy the line of inference. The distinction is between a
calculator which only accepts input and one which possesses a project, which
recognizes its inferences as steps in a wider sequence towards the achievement
of a valuable end. A computer which is capable of programming itself (5), and
thereby demonstrating its agency and project, closes the gap between itself and
entities with moral status. If there is no better reason to deny computers
normative value than that they are inorganic, then the question of personhood
obtains to digital constructs. Parsons' and Harman's definition of reasoning
therefore has a direct implication on the conditions of sentience and opens the
possibility of an ethics which must take an artificial intelligence seriously. </span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: "Droid Sans Fallback"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(1) Silliman, Matthew R. Sentience and Sensibility. Las
Vegas: Parmenides, 2006. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(2) Hurley, Patrick J. A Concise Introduction to Logic.
Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning,
2006.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(3) </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Parsons, Terence. “What Is an
Argument?” <i>The Journal of Philosophy</i>
1996: 93.4 164-185. </span><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(4) Harman, Gilbert. “Practical Reasoning.” <i>The
Review of Metaphysics</i> 1976: 29.3
431-463.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(5) Dreyfus, Hubert L. <i>What Computers Still
Can't Do. </i>Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1994.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Brett
Belcastro is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">_______________________</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">On the Formulation
of Successful <i>Ad Baculum</i> Arguments<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Matt Luz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Hurley explains that <i>ad baculum</i> arguments “occur whenever an
arguer poses a conclusion to another person and tells that person implicitly or
explicitly that some harm will come to them if he or she does not accept the
conclusion.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> I agree with most
of Hurley’s definition, except that the arguer does not state a conclusion.
Instead of stating a conclusion, the arguer uses a threat to coerce the
audience into engaging in the behavior suggested by the arguer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The audiences’ response to the
threat is based on various factors, which include: (i) the arguer’s use of
insufficient evidence, (ii) the credibility of the threat, (iii) the proximity
of danger, and (iv) the ability to easily avoid harm. The arguer’s goal through
the use of <i>ad baculum</i> arguments is to
convince the audience to engage in the behavior suggested by the arguer. I
argue that these four components are necessary conditions for structuring a
successful <i>ad baculum</i> argument.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Insufficient evidence provides a claim, which implements an
emotional appeal, and is constructed by the arguer in order to manipulate the
audiences’ behavior. The arguer uses insufficient evidence when they cannot
provide a logical reason as to why the audience should comply with what they
want, and so the arguer will use insufficient evidence to convince the audience
not to behave as the arguer wants them to.<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> In other words,
insufficient evidence is used to support poor reasoning. In <i>ad baculum</i> arguments, the insufficient
evidence appeals to fear. If the arguer is to say, “If you tell the boss I
missed work yesterday, I will lose my job. Furthermore, my family will go
hungry,” it would qualify as an appeal to pity.<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> This is another
form of insufficient evidence because it involves appealing to emotions.
Instead of appealing to fear, it appeals to guilt.<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
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If <i>ad baculum</i>
arguments are to be successful, they must appeal emotionally to the audience by
delivering a threat. For threats to be effective, they must identify with
psychological discomfort and an unwanted outcome against the interest of the
audience. The threat presents the audience with a choice, to either engage or
not engage in the behavior the arguer wants them to. This decision to comply
with the arguer’s request is based on the credibility of the threat. Force is a
necessary component in delivering an effective and appealing threat; its proper
use makes some threats stronger than others. It also shows to be more
compelling when the insufficient evidence provided in the case is strong. This
provides the audience with a stronger inclination toward the likelihood of the
unwanted consequence actually occurring. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The American Psychological Association defines fear as “a
rational reaction to an objectively identified external danger that may induce
a person to flee or attack in self-defense.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><sup> </sup>Based
on this definition, I would like to address the concept of danger with the same
concepts in this definition, for one fears the possibility of danger. Danger
necessarily involves perceived outcomes based on rational behavioral-reactions,
proximity to the audience, and the degree to which one would engage in
self-defensive strategies to avoid it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The presence of danger poses a threat to self-sustainment
and/or some part to existence, or existence as a whole. Danger is the threat
operating on the threat and they are dependent on perception and emotional
reactions. Pfau references Aristotle’s claim that “emotions are permeated by
reason” in his essay.<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> If one experiences an event where danger is
proximal, chances are that they would not wish to experience that same event
again, for when one faces the possibility of danger, one perceives it as a
threat and experiences psychological discomfort. When talking about danger and
its influence on the audience, it is important to identify what I am talking
about. I refer to this object which presents danger as the fear-object.
Fear-objects introduce danger to the audience. These fear-object are anything
(events, persons, etc.) which the audience perceives to be dangerous. When the
audience is confronted with danger, one tailors their behaviors in order to
avoid presupposed consequences which the danger underscores.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Harm is the permanent loss of some aspect of one’s
existence, whether it is bodily functioning or the continuation of a positive
experience significant to one’s existence. From this, harm appears to always,
in every case, allude to an unwanted consequence. Harm is something I believe
one will tailor any actions towards eliminating the thought of, and in doing so
is behaving rationally. “Witte’s research indicated that fear appeals can be
effective, but only under two conditions: (1) the threat must be credible, so
that the respondent takes it as a real danger to him or her, and (2) the action
recommended to deter the threat must be perceived by the respondent as feasible
and easy to carry out.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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When the audience sees that the fear is both relevant to
them and also harm is easy to avoid, they are more likely to comply with the
arguer. In this moment, the arguer is either victorious or fails in convincing
the audience of their argument. If the <i>ad
baculum</i> argument is successful, the audience will comply with the arguer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Matt
Luz is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "palatino linotype" , serif; font-size: 10pt;">_______________________</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Friends<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">J. Stanley Yake<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The hills pass by in radiant dress.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Indian Summer sun<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Bejewels the softened contours of these friends.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Their scattered oranges<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Set the darkened greens to rest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Their yellow greens lay open doors;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
They beckon as we past.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We stop a while for track repairs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
A moving freight<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
For minutes draws a horizontal line<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
And sets afloat those colored invitations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The gentle shoreline soon returns<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
And nature’s softness quickens as we move.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
But West Point squares the shoreline meant for trees,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
For gentle lines and natural grace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It’s flat, wide walls and perfect angles<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Drive the concrete down and up<o:p></o:p></div>
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And back and forth on every side.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
No graceful rooting here;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
No going where the goings good<o:p></o:p></div>
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For self-fulfillment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
No luck personal growth<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
From soil enriched by fruits of former years,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
By moving toward the sun, or toward the water,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Or toward the other good we need to save our lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
No. Here the concrete buttresses against attack<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Stake out the boundaries of the world:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The place the flag’s unfurled.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
These are not the Palisades,<o:p></o:p></div>
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The natural comfort of the river guest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
These are not the stolen parks<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
That structure evening trysts<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
For timid wanderers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
No.---<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
This is the call to arms!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The definition of the enemy<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Just outside the walls.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is protection from the man-made!<o:p></o:p></div>
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But who or what protects from the protection?<o:p></o:p></div>
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These golden, gorgeous hills<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Invite the strangers in,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Provide some warmth to passers by<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
And sustenance to rooted trees.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What warmth could come from definitions?<o:p></o:p></div>
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What strength when social roots are sheared<o:p></o:p></div>
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By concrete slabs,<o:p></o:p></div>
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When flags exclude and push away?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The Indian Summer sun<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bejewels our social roots<o:p></o:p></div>
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With colored warmth and synergistic life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It covers o’er the reckless growth of shoots,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Protects from definition’s strife.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I’ll take these shaded, green and golden hills,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
These Palisades, this flowing river’s open doors.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ll take the invitation every time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’ll take the splendor in the grass,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The Wordsworth joy at nature’s call.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I’ll move with strangers through the pass,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
And live with them outside the wall.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div>
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<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> I take the issue to
be that we cannot derive a non-vacuous, action-directing normative conclusion
from any set of purely descriptive (that is, non-moral, non-normative)
claims. The qualification “non-vacuous”
follows from the many successful efforts, beginning with Prior (1960) validly
to provide clever (yet apparently vacuous, non-instructive, or
non-action-guiding counterexamples to Hume (see Guevara, 2008). For example:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
1. Either the moon is made of cheese or you ought to
respect your mother.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
2. The moon is not made of cheese.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
3. Therefore, you ought to respect your mother.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
The argument is formally valid (Either A or
B/not-A//B), and appears to derive an ought-statement from a set of
is-statements; yet the argument offers no compelling basis for accepting the
normative conclusion beyond the insistent formal mechanisms of logic. Furthermore, we may freely substitute any
(repugnant or particularistic) ought-statement for B without loss of validity:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
1. Either the moon is made of cheese or you ought to
insult your mother.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
2. The moon is not made of cheese.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
3. Therefore, you ought to insult your mother.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> In an earlier paper
(1995) which Silliman references, I argue that the is-ought gap is clearest
when attempting to get from is to ought in deductive contexts (a process I
called “get-D”), while suggesting that one might “get-ND” (“get in some
non-deductive sense”) from one to the other (in an explanation, for
instance). I never mention induction in
that earlier work, but assume that abduction (which only some take to be a
species of inductive inference) may at times appear to bridge the gap, where,
for instance, actually having obligations to one’s mother best explains some
other observed phenomenon. But in these
cases, the bridging occurs not on the basis of some tacit normativity in the
premises, but in the process of clarifying an otherwise unexplained
observation. Peirce first described abduction (later dubbed “retroduction”) as
involving “some very curious circumstance, which would be explained by the supposition
that it was the case of a certain general rule, and thereupon adopt that
supposition” (1998, p. 189). Here is his
attempted formalization of abduction:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
1. The surprising fact, C, is observed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
2. But, if H were true, C would be a matter of course,
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
3. hence. There is reason to suspect that H is true.
(p. 231). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
Most commentators agree that, in affirming the
consequent, abduction resists successful formalization. I’ll leave it to the reader to solve these
and other riddles of abduction and to apply the results to Silliman’s examples.
(See Plutynsky for a list of worries attending the formalization and
justification of abduction.)<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Silliman at least
momentarily appears to agree: “By the definition of deduction, nothing can
emerge in the conclusion that was not already contained in the premises, so
unless there are at least tacitly normative elements in the premises, a
normative conclusion will be invalid.”
Serving as a clear example of the “permanent tension” I note above, he
prefaces this Humean insight with this contradictory assertion: “on [Hume’s]
account, no genuine (i.e., deductive) reasoning process can get us from purely
descriptive premises to prescriptive conclusions. I argue to the contrary, <i>even in the case of deduction</i>, at least
in real-world reasoning….” (emphases mine). Notice that the final proviso
regarding “real world reasoning,” in underscoring either the tacit normativity
of premises or the processes of argument construction which, in his words,
“imbues” reasoning with irreducible normativity, does not violate but actually
presupposes Hume’s position on the is-ought gap.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> And not, as the
newly embrained yet still incompetent scarecrow in <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> would have
it: "The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle
is equal to the square root of the remaining side."<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See, e.g. the case
of David Hans Arntson, charged with flying two Alaska Airlines flights under
the influence of alcohol in 2014 (<a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pilot-charged-drunkenly-flying-alaska-airlines-20160121-story.html">http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pilot-charged-drunkenly-flying-alaska-airlines-20160121-story.html</a>);
or the as-yet unidentified American Airlines pilot stopped on the tarmac from
flying under the influence of alcohol this year after failing a Breathalyzer
test (<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-american-airlines-pilot-arrested-breathalyzer-20160327-story.html">http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-american-airlines-pilot-arrested-breathalyzer-20160327-story.html</a>).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="background: white;">Leviticus,
Ch.16, </span><i>Tyndale’s Old Testament</i>,<span style="background: white;"> 1992, 172.</span> Yale University Press; Modern
Spelling ed edition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/lds/meridian/2009/scapegoat.html#fn2<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> John Rawls, <i>A Theory of Justice, </i>Oxford: Oxford University Press 1971, 24-25.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> Both stories also can be found in
Michael Sandel’s <i>Justice: What’s The
Right Thing To Do</i>? New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2009, 31-35, 40-41. See also –<i>The Illustrated London News</i>, September 20, 1884<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> Ursula K. LeGuin, <i>The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, </i>New York:
Perennial, 2004, 283-284.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> See Michael Sandel 2009, 31-33, as well as </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Edgar Allan Poe, <em><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket</span></em> Wiley
and Putnam (1838), and the following link: </span><a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/30093/edgar-allan-poes-eerie-richard-parker-coincidence"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">http://mentalfloss.com/article/30093/edgar-allan-poes-eerie-richard-parker-coincidence</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span><u><span style="color: blue; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> Michael Sandel’s <i>Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do</i>? New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2009, 32.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Hurley, P. J.
Concise Introduction to Logic. 9<sup>th</sup> Edition. Cengage Learning. Print.
113.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Childress, J. F.
“Appeals to Conscience.” Ethics 89.4 (1979).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See note 1: 114.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[16]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> See note 1: 114.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[17]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> “American
Psychological Association – Glossary of Psychological Terms.” <i>APA</i>. APA, 2002. Web. 27 March 2016:
http://www.apa.org/research/action/glossary<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn18">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[18]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Pfau, M. W. “Who’s
Afraid of Fear Appeals? Contingency, Courage, and Deliberation in Rhetorical
Theory and Practice.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 40.2 (2007): 216-237.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn19">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/t12.22.1.docx#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "palatino"; font-size: 9.0pt;">[19]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> Walton, D. N.
“Practical Reasoning and the Structure of Fear Appeal Arguments.” <i>Philosophy & Rhetoric</i> 29.4 (1996):
304.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-50962272477903398822016-05-15T08:16:00.001-04:002016-05-15T13:19:42.694-04:00Volume 20.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 26pt;"><i>Thesis
XII</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">A Philosophical Review<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Volume 20 • Number 1<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Special Issue: Philosophy and
Literature<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February, 2013<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">___________</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>Commensalism:
Philosophy </b></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b>and
Literature</b> </span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Jacob Wheeler</span> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>Metaphysics
and Metaphors</b></span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><b> </b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Avery S. Finnivan</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>Real-World
Application with Directed Motivation</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Brandon Gaudet</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>Blood
and Oxygen </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Nicole Kristin Braden</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><b>The
Aims of Higher Education</b></span><span style="font-family: "cambria" , serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><b> </b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Seth Kershner</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">____________________</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Commensalism:
Philosophy and Literature<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jacob Wheeler<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The primary
relationship between philosophy and literature is that the former exists as a
necessary but insufficient condition for the quality of the latter. For a work of literature to be a work of
quality, it must possess and exhibit philosophical themes. This relationship, however, does not function
in the reverse; the few benefits that philosophy can garner from literature
come at too high of a philosophical price.
I shall address these two claims in the order by which I have introduced
them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">All words have
meaning. While they may not possess
inherent meaning (a debate for a different location) they certainly all have
meaning by the event of their consumption.
As such, literature, while necessarily an aesthetic venture, cannot
divorce itself from the meaning of its own medium: words. Therefore, the quality of the literature is
inexorably tied to the quality of the meaning of the words. The epitome of quality meaning is manifested
by the thorough analysis and explication of philosophical themes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">While
literature benefits greatly from philosophy, philosophy does not enjoy equal
benefit from literature. While
literature may, by virtue of greater aesthetics and emotional involvement,
improve the dissemination of ethical philosophy, it lacks the proper tools to
frame correctly and support its philosophy.
Philosophical pronouncements of its conclusions, but ought to spend the
majority of its efforts explaining the line of reasoning, the premises, and the
inferences. Literature can embed the
conclusion by support of an anecdote, but not much else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">One of the very
facets that does make literature engaging is the emotional involvement it has
the tendency to evoke. This very facet
can make literature a dangerous medium for the dissemination of
philosophy. While philosophy does not
and ought not to deny the emotional side of life, emotions can and do obscure
clear, rational thought, the basis of even moral claims. There is a possibility, then, that the
emotional component of literature could militate against the contemplation of a
work’s philosophical content.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16.0pt;">Note to Readers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review </span></i><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">is published biannually as an open forum promoting
respectful philosophical exchanges among students, faculty, and the
public. Submissions reflect a diversity
of disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially
encouraged to participate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Address all
correspondence to: <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Dr. David K.
Johnson, Editor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Department of
Philosophy, IDS, and Modern Languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Massachusetts
College of Liberal Arts <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">North Adams,
Massachusetts 01247 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Telephone: (413)
662-5448.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email:
d.johnson@mcla.mass.edu.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Associate
Editor: Dr. Matthew R. Silliman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email: m.silliman@mcla.edu<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Special Guest
Editor: Nicole K. Braden<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 9.0pt;">Email:
nbraden@acad.umass.edu<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">It could be
noted, though, that my argument may better be addressed against literature
replacing philosophy, that I have not truly argued against a supplementary
relationship. Perhaps the benefit of
literature is the ability to process and analyze case studies of ethical theory
which may provide important context for the abstractions of philosophical
writings. Literature may not be virtuous
enough to replace philosophy, but just enough to augment it advantageously.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">There is merit
in this position and through this lens, literature may on occasion be able to
provide such support. The articulation
of certain scenarios in which certain ethical principles are actualized
provides very little support for those principles; an enumeration of a few
anecdotes does little to provide justification for thought or behavior. Literature needs philosophy, but the converse
does not follow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Jacob Wheeler
is an alumnus of MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">_____________________</span></i></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Metaphysics
and Metaphors<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Avery S.
Finnivan<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Literary and
artistic style can enhance the efficacy of philosophical writing. This is a somewhat controversial claim, as
for many years the style of writing academics deemed best for philosophical
works has been straightforward, regimented, unornamented, and often
technical. While this approach to
philosophical writing clearly has merits, I think that adding literary or
artistic ornamentation provides no obstacle to the clarity of such works, and
can actually increase their effectiveness in a number of ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">First and
foremost, the addition of aesthetic value to philosophical works can help
capture and keep readers’ attention.
Whereas an unornamented, purely factual presentation of an argument can
seem dry or boring to many readers. Colorful descriptive terms, multitudes of
metaphors, or amusing literary techniques like alliteration adds interest to
any written work. As such, these
features will help keep readers interested in a text, and thus more able to
understand and agree with, or object to, the text’s central argument.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Certain
literary techniques (such as simile and metaphor) can also convey ideas more
concisely than unornamented, non-literary writing. For example, rather than taking several
paragraphs to approach and explain a complex ethical concept (such as the
morality or immorality of voluntary euthanasia) from many angles, using a
simile (voluntary euthanasia is like drowning a child in a bathtub, whereas
waiting for a patient to die is like standing by while a child drowns in a
bathtub) can convey the vital points of the concept with far more efficiently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">These
techniques can also increase the vibrancy or clarity of a concept. Colorfully describing the death of a pig in a
slaughterhouse can prevent people from romanticizing it or dismissing it as a
necessary, or relatively insignificant evil.
Using simile or metaphor to compare the death of a clam to the death of
a carrot can stop readers from attributing anthropomorphic feelings (or, in
fact, any feelings) to an animal which does not possess them. Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ provides a
shining example of metaphor and imagery aiding in the explanation of a complex
philosophical concept [http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">As a last point
in favor of this argument, I think that aesthetic value is a worthwhile
achievement in its own right. As such,
so long as it has no negative effects on the functionality or content of a
piece, writers should attempt to incorporate it. Even if it does have some negative effects,
its positive effects may outweigh these, shifting the overall scale in favor of
including the aesthetic elements in question.
Art, in and of itself, need not have any point other than to be
aesthetically pleasing; as such, artistic or literary style does not need to
add anything other than aesthetic value to a work in order for one to be
justified in including it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">One common
objection to the incorporation of literary or artistic style is that it can
make messages more difficult to understand.
Supporters of this argument claim that metaphor and simile introduce
unnecessary vagueness into philosophical works, that alliteration and vivid
language can distract a reader from the core substance of a philosophical
argument [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphor/]. This argument is difficult to deny, as many
readers have surely encountered cryptic metaphors which evaded their
understanding, or alliterations that they found annoying rather than
attractive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">However, while
the above objection does sometimes hold true, it is not always the case. So long as one is careful when using literary
and artistic style, there is nothing wrong with doing so. Badly executed literary techniques often
cause the problems I mention above; the techniques in themselves are no more
inherently problematic than power drills are inherently evil because they
sometimes cause harm to their users.
Certainly, authors of philosophical works should not write in artistic
style exclusively – that would undoubtedly engender confusion and frustration
in readers – but they should not entirely bar such style from entering their
writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Others might
argue that incorporating literary or artistic techniques can bring emotion into
a previously reason-based argument, eating away at the argument’s value until
it is no more than a piece of propaganda.
Most people accept that art, or even non-artistic aesthetic
appreciation, is closely tied to emotion; it could be that introducing artistic
or literary style to a work of moral philosophy obscures the reasons at the
base of the work's ethical argument, replacing it with an 'ethics of care'
format. While some philosophers support
the idea of care-based ethics, the consensus appears to be that reason is overall
far superior as a basis for argumentation [http://www.iep.utm.edu/care-eth/].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I respond to
this final objection by admitting that it is partially true; yet it does not
have to be so, and incorporating emotion does not invalidate reason – it simply
should not substitute or obscure reason.
Good philosophers, when reading a philosophical argument, will identify
and set aside any emotion present; if the resulting argument cannot hold water
based on reason alone, it will not convince them. If, however, the argument is logical and
rational with or without the emotion, then the addition of emotion need not
negatively affect the argument at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Avery S.
Finnivan is a student at MCLA<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">_________________________</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<u><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Real-World
Application with Directed Motivation<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Brandon Gaudet<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The primary relationship between philosophy and literature
is one of frequent overlap generally resulting in mutual benefit. Literature
usually benefits from containing strong philosophical ideas, and philosophy
usually benefits from being incorporated in literature and from containing
literary devices. It seems easy to find philosophy’s place in literature, but
it is more difficult to find literature’s place in philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It appears strikingly obvious that literature often contains
philosophical concepts. Most works of literature hint at various moral ideas,
or have plots wherein characters attempt to right wrongs. The best works of
literature contain strong and agreeable, or controversial, philosophical
notions. The New Testament is a good example of literature that contains strong
and (mostly) agreeable moral concepts, whereas the Old Testament exemplifies a
work containing controversial philosophical ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">While discussing the value of literature for philosophy,
some argue that incorporating philosophy into literature, while beneficial to
literature, is harmful to philosophy. Proponents of this view claim that literature
serves to make philosophical ideas cloudy and unclear, or only to hint at
truths while never stating them outright.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">While it is true that literature sometimes clouds
philosophical ideas, it also generally appeals to more people. As such, any
philosophical concepts contained in literature are likely to reach a larger
audience. Additionally, literature, unlike philosophical treatises, has a
strong emotional appeal. Emotion sometimes serves much better than pure reason appropriately
to move someone to act in agreement with any philosophical idea. The benefits
of increased audience size and greater emotional charge outweigh the
potentially negative value of slightly clouded ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">While discussing the value of literary devices in
philosophy, some argue that adding these devices is detrimental to philosophy
because it adds emotion to a previously reason-based argument.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This objection supposes that the emotional aspect of
literature is not beneficial, but negative. However, emotion is frequently a
sufficient motivator to call people to action. Generally, logical, reason-based
understanding is not sufficient to motivate people to act a certain way. Logic
and reason-based argumentation are necessary conditions for acting morally, but
are not often sufficient alone to motivate people to act.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In short, literature benefits from philosophy because works
that include philosophical ideas are more likely to be successful, as people
will be more drawn to the real-world content and meaning of such books.
Philosophy benefits from being included in literature or having literary
devices because its ideas will likely receive a larger audience, and because
the emotional appeal of literature helps people to realize the value of
philosophical ideas and motivates them to act in accordance with those ideas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Brandon Gaudet is a student at MCLA</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">_______________________</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<u style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Blood
and Oxygen</span></u></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nicole Kristin Braden<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The primary
relationship between philosophy and literature is their symbiotic role in
understanding as well as appreciating human nature and the world around us. It
is similar to the relationship between the heart and the lungs. Our blood
carries the oxygen we need to the rest of our bodies, including our lungs and
heart. They both are necessary to the survival of the entire entity, and
neither of them could keep functioning in the absence of the other</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Literature
needs philosophy in order to impact our understanding of ourselves and the
universe. If we picture the heart as literature, and philosophy as lungs, we
see that blood without oxygen is empty and cannot keep the organism
functioning. Though it may have other purposes, such as providing entertainment
(just like blood can also close wounds), it is not sufficient for understanding
human nature.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Philosophy
needs literature in order to impact our understanding of ourselves and the
universe. If there is no blood to carry the oxygen from the lungs, the oxygen
is never transported to where it is most needed. Similarly, philosophy cannot
reach very many people without the literary form.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Literature and
philosophy are two of the many cornerstones to understanding ourselves and the
universe. We need the lungs and the heart to be functioning at their best to
live with the highest quality. We cannot fully understand ourselves and the
universe without reading -- and without reading philosophy. We could live with
only one lung, or a heart that works at only a certain percentage of its
capacity, but our lives would be much worse for it. With the same result we
could live without parts of literature and philosophy, like poetry and
epistemology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">One may object
to this that if both are inherent in each other, one only needs to focus on one
to gain a full understanding. However, they both give us different perspectives
and approaches to similar topics, some of which work better with certain ideas
than others. The heart cannot procure oxygen and lungs cannot pump blood. If
there is not enough blood to carry the oxygen, or if we have too little oxygen
in our blood, we become anemic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 115%;">A more cynical
objection may be that there is no point to trying to understand ourselves and
the universe, so we do not need literature or philosophy. This is perhaps the
hardest objection to answer. One could always reductively ask what the point of
it all is. However, I believe that I can confidently reply that human beings
will always encounter situations which rip them out of their blissfully
ignorant state. The loss of a loved one or even the encounter with love itself
will force individuals to think about themselves, their role in the world, and
the world around them. We invented literature and philosophy precisely because
we cannot help but contemplate these things. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nicole Braden
is an alumna of MCLA.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">____________________</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><u>The Aims of Higher Education</u></span></div>
</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Seth Kershner<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What is higher education <i>for,
</i>in the end? What is its ultimate
aim? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">These are questions of enormous relevance today, as state
governments struggle to support public higher education in the midst of an
historic recession. This bleak situation
has motivated some to reevaluate the role of the University. More and more we hear politicians and others
talk about how colleges and universities need to produce fewer Liberal Arts
graduates and more from job-specific disciplines. According to this line of reasoning, we need
to stop offering majors in such fields as Modern Languages (all but eliminated
at SUNY Albany) or Philosophy (on the chopping block at a number of schools),
so that administrators can put more money into developing professional training
programs in “growth areas” like Gaming and Homeland Security. To sum up: the proper response of colleges
and universities to an unprecedented economic crisis is to jettison the
Humanities, and become more and more aligned with corporate interests. Well, that’s one possible response to a
recession and record rates of poverty.
But there is another, one that starts with the question, <i>What if we were to conceive of colleges and
universities as </i>active participants<i>
in the struggle against poverty?</i> One
philosopher who contributed a great deal to answering this question was Ignacio
Ellacuría (1930-1989). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ellacuría – a Jesuit philosopher, theologian and university
president – was a Basque born in Spain.
However, for most of his adult life he lived and worked in El
Salvador. During his decade-long tenure
as president of the Universidad Centro Americana (UCA), he molded the region’s
most prestigious university into a tool for criticizing ruling elites and
uncovering the causes of El Salvador’s widespread poverty. Ellacuría himself wrote numerous articles
promoting the idea of a negotiated, non-military solution to the Salvadoran
civil war (1980-1992). His advocacy
eventually cost him his life and the lives of five other Jesuit intellectuals
(along with a housekeeper and her daughter) when a U.S.-trained Salvadoran army
battalion carried out a massacre at the UCA in November 1989. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ellacuría’s champions in the Anglo-American philosophy world
are few and far between, which is likely due to the fact that the bulk of his
philosophical work has never been translated into English. However, it is worth mentioning Steven Gamboa
(Cal State, Bakersfield) and David Gandolfo (Furman University). Gamboa has written several articles on the
thought of Ellacuría and sees in the Jesuit’s political philosophy a
much-needed antidote – one more rooted in the “real world” of power politics
and oppression – to the work of Nozick and Rawls<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>. Gandolfo has written – among other articles –
a useful comparison of Ellacuría with Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire.<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the remainder of this article I would like to just
outline one key aspect of Ellacuría’s thinking on the question of the
university: the poor and oppressed as “the horizon of university activity.” This aspect touches both on the ultimate aims
of the university as well as its inherently political function. Ellacuría rejected the supposed neutrality of
universities when he spoke at an UCA seminar in 1976: “There is no a-political
university because the university is an historical reality and consequently
conditions (and is in turn conditioned by) its historical context.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Thus, if the university 1) can never be
a-political, 2) is situated in a deeply divided society, as the UCA undoubtedly
was and as our own arguably are at the moment, and 3) if – as David Gandolfo
argues – “not to take sides is automatically to side with the dominant side”<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
– then those leading a university will either make a conscious decision to make
the poor and oppressed the horizon of their activity or allow the university to
be the plaything of the most powerful in society. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Making the poor and oppressed the focus of university
activity means that students – often seen as consumers who want a good return
on their investment – must relinquish any say over the direction of the
university. “If this [university]
community reproduces the interests of the reigning social system and of the
dominant elites … if students are coming to the university campus in order to
secure a dominant and profitable place in an unjustly structured society, we
find ourselves with a serious constraint on the ideal of the university’s
mission.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> A university that responds to the needs of
the poor would not be content simply to train students to take up positions in
an unjustly structured society. The
objective would be to maintain the university as a “place of freedom,” by which
Ellacuría meant freedom to critique the unjust distribution of wealth and
power, and to formulate viable solutions to the problems of the poor.<a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Students who object to academic institutions seeing them as
mere consumers- or workers-in-training, and who believe that colleges and
universities should be more creatively engaged with the problems of the world
we live in, would do well to turn to Ignacio Ellacuría for inspiration. And among the many good reasons to learn
Spanish, one that should stand out for philosophy students is the opportunity
to read his works in their original language. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Seth Kershner is an alumnus of MCLA and adjunct professor of
Spanish.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div>
<!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> We
do have other vital organs. Similarly, there are other disciplines (i.e.
science, music, anthropology, and others) which are vital to our understanding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">[i]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Steven Gamboa, “Realism and Utopia in the Political Philosophy of Ignacio
Ellacuría,” presentation online at <a href="http://tinyurl.com/bflyce9">http://tinyurl.com/bflyce9</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">[ii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">David Ignatius Gandolfo, “A Role
for the Privileged? Solidarity and the University in the Work of Ignacio
Ellacuría and Paulo Freire,” <i>Peace &
Justice Studies </i>17, no. 1 (2008): 9-33.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[iii]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: ES-SV;"> <span lang="ES-SV">Ignacio Ellacuría, <i>Escritos
universitarios, </i>UCA Editores, San Salvador, pp. 94-95. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[iv]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="ES-SV" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: ES-SV;">
Gandolfo, op. cit., pg. 16<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[v]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="ES-SV" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: ES-SV;">
Quoted in Hector Samour, “Universidad para la liberación: la proyección social
de la UCA,” online at </span><a href="http://www.uca.edu.sv/facultad/chn/c1170/Universidad_para_la_liberacion.pdf"><span lang="ES-SV" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: ES-SV;">http://www.uca.edu.sv/facultad/chn/c1170/Universidad_para_la_liberacion.pdf</span></a><span lang="ES-SV" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: ES-SV;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/David/Desktop/thesis%20xII%2020.1.docx#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[vi]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: IT;"> <span lang="IT">Gandolfo, op cit., pg. 15</span></span></span><span lang="IT"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-32329505343668591692012-06-08T18:10:00.003-04:002012-06-08T23:29:38.579-04:00Volume 19.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Castellar", "serif";">THESIS XII</span></i></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span><b><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 19 • Number 1</span></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">September, 2011</span><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"></span></u></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; font-weight: normal; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></u></h4><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Alexandra Nichipor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Lamb for Dinner? </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jacob Wheeler</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">The Verge of Vegetarian Virtue </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Emily Burke</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">A Feminist Defense of Eating Animals</span><b> </b> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Corey Sloane</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Concerning Facebook </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Agnosticism? </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Barry Sullivan</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">From One Thing Into Another</span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Lamb for Dinner?</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Animals as Symbols in Christianity</span></i></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Alexandra Nichipor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Christianity is perhaps the most anthropocentric of all world religions: God gave dominion of the earth to <i>humans</i>; God came down in <i>human</i> form in order to redeem <i>humanity</i>. For much of history, Christian authorities maintained that animals did not have souls, and were outside the scope of religion. (1) However, the full picture is not so simple. Thomas Aquinas maintained that animals <i>did</i> have souls, just not immortal ones: “Wart-hogs, as well as men, possess souls, for they, too, in their humble and different ways, are alive […] [but] there is no implication that [such] a soul survives the death of the body.” (2) Some influential modern theologians, such as C.S. Lewis, assert that animals <i>do</i> share in the resurrection (though only tame ones). (3) Ancient and Medieval saints preached to animals. (4) Also, no other Abrahamic religion deals so heavily in representations of animals: the dove, the fish, the lamb, and other examples too numerous to list here.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">What is the impact of this symbolism on the actual flesh-and-blood species being represented? It may be beneficial: the symbolism of animal-as-God, as in the case of the dove, may represent the elevation of this animal to divinity. Metaphor in itself is not negative; if the foundation of ethics is the idea that we treat others as we would like to be treated, then metaphor is the beginning of compassion. On the other hand, symbolic use may be harmful to the animal. It is a form of the absent referent, defined as “anything whose original meaning is undercut as it is absorbed into a different hierarchy of meaning.” (5) Certain qualities of the animal, such as the innocence of a lamb, are utilized by the symbolic representation, and the remaining qualities of the living animal are ignored or fade away. Certainly, symbolic usage evidences no concern for the animal, only for human interests, and certainly does not prevent violence being done against that animal. As scholars of religion have noted, “Worship is primarily for the benefit of the worshipper rather than any indication of adoration for the worshipped.” (6)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">I will use one of the most ancient and potent animal symbols in the Judeo-Christian theology as a case study here: the lamb.<sup> </sup>(7) The lamb appears in the 23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm, in the writings of the Prophet Ezekiel, the final command of Jesus to Peter, and countless Christian exegeses. One can rightly say that, “God looks after his people in the same manner a good shepherd ought to look after his flock.” (8)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Jesus is frequently called The Lamb, due to his innocence and his sacrifice. Historically, the sacrifice of domestic animals was required at the Temple of Jerusalem on numerous occasions. Though goats and bulls were also offered, there is evidence that lambs and sheep were killed in the largest numbers. (9) During the Passover in Egypt, a lamb was killed and his/her blood smeared on the doors of Israelite homes to keep them from the scourge of God; this ritual was repeated every year in each Jewish household. Jesus’ crucifixion reportedly took place around Passover; the symbolism is quite clear.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The lamb’s purity was essential to its acceptability as sacrifice. Only unblemished lambs were acceptable to God; purity was an essential component of a sacrificial animal. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The sacrifice of Jesus has been read by some Christian interpreters<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5277093716109348436&postID=3232950534366859169" name="_GoBack"></a> as a reversal of the binding of Isaac (wherein Abraham was commanded by God to kill his son, Isaac, but God replaced the child with a ram at the last moment), which has been interpreted by modern scholars as referring to the replacement of human sacrifice with animal sacrifice. In Christian theology, animal sacrifice appears to be rendered moot by the sacrifice of Jesus. This is an important theological point that receives little attention. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The symbol of the lamb had limited impact on the ill treatment of young sheep. While it is true that lambs were no longer sacrificed as offerings, this may have more to do with the destruction of the Temple system and theological divisions between Judaism and Christianity than with any sort of compassion. Lambs continued to be eaten, and are considered a delicacy in most Christian countries.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The lamb is a symbol for both Christ and the believer, yet she is also dinner for the Christian believer. One should think it anathema to eat an animal associated with divinity. Of course, Christ is a divinity, and Christians eat him all the time at the Eucharist; the relevant difference here is probably Christ’s consent to give of his flesh and blood, and the animal’s inability to do so. The problem of lamb for dinner seems indicative of the problems of animals in Christianity: Lambs are symbols of Christ, yet they are rarely considered to be subjects of moral concern. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">So…what to do about this? It’s unlikely that we will stop using animal symbols, and therefore the paradigm of abstinence that characterizes the vegetarian/vegan movement, will not be useful here. However, it may be possible to reinterpret those symbols. We have seen Christ as a lamb - can we not also see the lamb as Christ? To quote Andrey Linzey, “Christianity is not about identification with suffering, but about condemnation of it.” (10)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Notes</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(1)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Salisbury, <i>The Beast Within, </i>p<i>.</i> 2.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(2)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As quoted in Linzey, <i>Why Animal Suffering Matters, </i>p<i>. </i>25.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(3)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Hobgood-Oster. <i>Holy Dogs and Asses, </i>p<i>.</i> 112.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(4)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Grant. <i>Early Christians and Animals, </i>p<i>. </i>25.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(5)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Adams. <i>The Sexual Politics of Meat, </i>p<i>. </i>35.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(6)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Preece. <i>Awe for the Tiger, Love for the Lamb, </i>p<i>. </i>4.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(7)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">On a personal note, my own awakening to vegetarianism occurred at four years old, when my mother informed me that we would be eating lamb for dinner, and I became confused and horrified, because this was the same thing we called Christ in church.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(8)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Preece. <i>Awe for the Lion, Love for the Lamb, </i>p<i>. </i>28.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(9)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">See Numbers 28:11, for instance, which commands that two bulls, one ram, and <i>SEVEN</i> lambs must be sacrificed at the beginning of each month. Elsewhere, more lambs are demanded for sacrifice than other animals.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; punctuation-wrap: simple; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(10)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Linzey. <i>Why Animal Suffering Matters, </i>p<i>. </i>164. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Bibliography</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Grant, Robert. <i>Early Christians and Animals</i>. London: Routledge Press, 1999. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Hobgood-Oster, Laura. <i>Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition</i>. Illinois: University of Illinois, 2008. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Salisbury, Joyce E. <i>The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages</i>. London: Routledge Press, 1994. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Sorrell , Roger D. <i>Saint Francis of Assisi and Nature</i>. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Campbell, Joseph. <i>Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor</i>. Joseph Campbell Foundation, 2001. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Berkoff, Mark A, and Carron Meaney. <i>The Encyclopedia of Animal Rights</i>. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Preece, Rod. <i>Awe for the Tiger, Love for the Lamb: A Chronicle of Sensibility to Animals</i>. Vancouver: BC Press, 2002. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Philippart, David. "Glad You Asked (Why Do Catholics Eat Fish on Friday?)." <i>U.S. Catholic</i> 1 Mar, 2007.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Linzey, Andrew. <i>Why Animal Suffering Matters: Philosophy, Theology, and Practical Ethics</i>. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Linzey, Andrew. "The Bible and Killing for Food." <i>The Animal Ethics Reader</i>. Ed. . Susan Armstrong. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Alexandra Nichipor is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The Verge of Vegetarian Virtue</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jacob Wheeler</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Vegetarianism is not a moral mandate. While there exists an ever expanding plurality of conceptualizations of vegetarianism, it will serve the purpose of this argument to understand vegetarianism as merely the practice of consuming nothing that requires the death of an animal to prepare. While vegetarianism may not be obligatory, it is wrong to kill an animal for food. (1) The seemingly counterintuitive tension begotten by such juxtaposition is dissolved by the possibility of consuming meat, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">contra</i> vegetarianism, without violating the moral status due to animals. While the respect of this moral status is often manifested by a moratorium on the consumption of meat, such abeyance is not a necessary condition thereof. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It is morally wrong to inflict death upon another sentient being to fulfill a flittingly unnecessary desire. The conditions under which most animals are kept and killed compound this moral obligation by the actualization of excessive cruelty. Even so, not all instances of eating meat begotten under such conditions are morally unacceptable. Actually, the very act of consumption is very rarely unacceptable. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It would be fitting now to transition from the theoretical to the practical. To purchase meat is to financially support an industry that constantly violates the moral status of animals. The consumption of meat, once purchased, is not. If meat were accidentally introduced to a vegetarian dish at a restaurant, the customer would have no moral obligation to discard the food. (2) </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Notes</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(1) I understand that there exist cases in which this would be inaccurate. These cases are marginal and unlikely. While they exist, they are irrelevant. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(2) There would be plenty of other reasons to not consume the meat (e.g. health concerns, symbolic display of principle, etc.) but they are not morally obligatory reasons. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Jacob Wheeler is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">A Feminist Defense of Eating Animals</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Emily Burke</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Feminists and animal rights activists have often butted heads, despite their common interest in fighting oppression and opposing violence. In some ways, feminists and animal rights activists should be natural allies. In other ways, their interests conflict. Feminist movements should align with animal rights movements because they share a common opposition to violence, domination, and the objectification of living things. However, animal rights activists should not require a certain diet from all people, as this is anti-feminist. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The tactics used by men who commit violent acts against women are strikingly similar to the tactics used by humans against animals. Objectification is used with both animals and women to rationalize the violence used <span style="background: white;">against these groups. We do not eat “animals”; we eat “meat”. By changing our language, we turn a living animal into an object for consumption (1). We do the same with women. When you take away the humanity of a woman, she is an object. This objectification legitimizes violence or rape. When animals and women are seen as objects, they transform from living beings into commodities that can be bought, sold, and owned. Therefore, the objectification of both animals and women perpetuates violence.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Although feminism and animal rights activists should align with one another, as they oppose a common oppressor, it is inherently anti-feminist to require a certain diet from all people. Not only is it harder for women to abstain from animal products for biological reasons (2), it is also harder for psychological reasons. In a society where women are expected to restrict what they eat, often to the point of developing an eating disorder, it would be dangerous to put more restrictions on what women can and can’t eat, even if it is for ethical reasons. In fact, it has been shown that vegetarianism in women is associated with eating disorders such as anorexia (2). The vegetarian women in this study were shown to have a greater fear of “fatness”. It has also been shown that vegetarian adolescents and young adults are more likely to report out-of-control binge eating than nonvegetarians, and former vegetarians are more likely to report engaging in extreme weight-loss behaviors (3). And, while there are many vegans and vegetarians out there who adopt this diet purely for ethic reasons, many mainstream animal ethics groups utilize fat-shaming, body-policing tactics that may further heighten women’s anxieties about food and their bodies with catchphrases like “Lose the blubber: go vegetarian” (4), or by encouraging women to become “skinny bitches” through veganism (5). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Animal rights activists and feminists should be allies. We all want to end violence against oppressed groups. However, feminists can fight for animal justice without necessarily adopting a vegan or vegetarian diet. Our toxic diet-culture leaves women extremely vulnerable to disordered eating, and to ignore this by requiring vegetarianism/veganism is ignoring women’s needs. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Notes</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">1. Adams, Carol J. "The Rape of Animals, The Butchering of Women." The Sexual Politics of Meat: a Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum, 1990. Print.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">2. George, Kathryn Paxton. Animal, Vegetable, or Woman?: a Feminist Critique of Ethical Vegetarianism. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2000. Print.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">3. Kadambari, Rao, Simon Gowers, and Arthur Crisp. "Some correlates of vegetarianism in anorexia nervosa."International Journal of Eating Disorders 5.3 (1986): 539-544. PsycINFO. EBSCO. Web. 21 June 2011.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">4. In Scopus. "ScienceDirect - Journal of the American Dietetic Association : Adolescent and Young Adult Vegetarianism: Better Dietary Intake and Weight Outcomes but Increased Risk of Disordered Eating Behaviors." Adolescent and Young Adult Vegetarianism: Better Dietary Intake and Weight Outcomes but Increased Risk of Disordered Eating Behaviors 109.9 (2009). ScienceDirect - Home. 26 Mar. 2009. Web. 21 June 2011. <http: article="" pii="" s0002822308023274="" science="" www.sciencedirect.com="">.</http:></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">5. PETA. Advertisement. PETA. PETA, 17 Aug. 2009. Web. <http: 08="" 17="" 2009="" archive="" b="" lose-the-blubber-go-vegetarian.aspx="" thepetafiles="" www.peta.org="">.</http:></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">6. Freedman, Rory, and Kim Barnouin. Skinny Bitch | New York Times Bestseller. Web. 22 June 2011. <http: www.skinnybitch.net=""></http:></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Emily Burke is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Concerning Facebook</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Spinoza, Metaphysics, and Social Networking </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">(1)</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Corey Sloane</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Definitions:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">1)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I use the term substance qualified as intangible, limitless, nonmaterial, and infinite.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">2)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Given the nature of substance, I must add that because substance is defined as stated above, it is essentially perfect. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">3)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This perfect substance can manifest itself or extend itself into physical (tangible or measurable) forms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Axioms:</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">1)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The ability to “like”, comment, post, tag, login, and share are all extensions of Facebook found in its profiles, and so they belong to the nature of Facebook.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">2)<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">No profile or faculty of Facebook exists outside of Facebook, as Facebook is both the substance which constitutes and the cause of the profiles and attributes of the profiles.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proposition I: Facebook cannot login to itself.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This is evident as in order to login, Facebook would have to exist as a profile independent of itself, which is absurd (as stated in Axiom 2). Therefore Facebook is in a continuous state of being logged in; it is never idle but rather is a persistently and infinitely active profile. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proposition II: Facebook cannot be liked, comment, or posted about, nor can it do so in regards to itself.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As stated in Axiom 1, the faculties of liking, commenting and posting are all extended attributes of Facebook to its profiles.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proposition III: Each profile is an extension and thus a manifestation of Facebook, but does not reflect it entirely, it is a mode I </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The profiles contain the faculties that Facebook has extended to them, but they do not represent what Facebook is in its entirety.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proposition IV: Facebook is substance.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As stated in definition 1, substance is infinite, intangible, and nonmaterial. The profiles of Facebook can exist in an infinite number of possibilities as the profiles are subject to change. These changes exist as an infinite potential of possible profile forms.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proof II: As stated in Proposition IV Facebook can exist in an infinite number of possible profile forms, thus it can be manifested in an infinite number of ways, making it intangible, and thus Facebook is made of substance as it was defined earlier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proposition V: If Facebook is substance, then Facebook is necessarily perfect.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As evident from Definitions 1, 2, 3 in conjunction with Proposition IV. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Corollary: I address those who disagree that Facebook is perfect because it changes. I would like to respond by saying that although Facebook does change, it does not do so out of any external influence (i.e. its profiles). Rather Facebook is motivated inherently to change in order to pursue the good, which would make it perfect, as perfection is seeking what is ideal and what is best. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proposition VI: If an individual possesses the faculties of an email address and self-generated password, the individual can take part in the essence of Facebook.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It is through these modes one is allowed to login (in metaphorical terms, “unlock”) to what Facebook is, how it behaves, what we can understand of it. As stated earlier, Facebook is infinite and perfect, so despite our ability to see extended attributes of it, we never conceive of what Facebook is completely.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Final Proposition: Despite our lack of full understanding of how or why Facebook is, it as an intangible substance, directly influences the material world</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">-<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This is evident as Facebook and its profiles have adjusted and changed: interpersonal communication, social and cultural language, the motion and placement of physical bodies in relation to one another, and how those bodies interact. </span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(1) This essay is based on Baruch Spinoza’s “The Ethics: Part I: Concerning God” in which Spinoza elaborates an ontological argument beginning with a definition of substance, and concluding with God’s existence. By changing simply a few terms, his argument can be turned from a defense of the existence of the divine, into a seemingly comedic interpretation of social networking online. This essay is meant to demonstrate how any argument and its propositions are susceptible to error, simply within their terminology. By changing only a few terms, a series of logical statements to explain the nature of God, become a way of exaggerating the qualities of an internet website.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Corey Sloane is a student at MCL</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">A</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~ </span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Agnosticism?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Etymologically, agnosticism simply means “don’t-know-ism” – the privative alpha attached to one of several Greek verbs for knowing. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gnosis</i>, which can mean wisdom or insight, also lent it’s name to a late Hellenistic religious movement emphasizing wise sayings and secret or mystical knowledge. In this literal and historical sense I am certainly a-Gnostic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In modern usage, however, agnosticism refers to a supposed middle ground between atheism and various forms of theism. The question is how to characterize that middle ground, and whether there really is any on which to stand. One approach rejects it as empty rhetoric: as Feuerbach says, “Agnosticism is consequent atheism.” On this view the refusal to commit oneself to either the existence or nonexistence of a supreme being is at best misplaced courtesy toward believers, and at worst blatant intellectual dishonesty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A more nuanced account distinguishes between the essentially metaphysical claims of both atheism and theism – denying and affirming respectively the existence of God – and the mainly epistemological claim of agnosticism: that given the evidence we simply can’t tell. On this view, agnosticism deftly sets aside the question of the being of God as beyond our capacity to know. Bertrand Russell uses the term in this sense.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There is a risk here, though, of intellectual laziness, as though calling yourself agnostic lets you off the hook. Claiming agnosticism in this nuanced, epistemic sense carries with it the obligation seriously to have evaluated the evidence – and few of us may be equipped to do that. On the other hand, evidence either for or against theism might actually be pretty sparse. Humanity seems to be in its infancy in terms of understanding the nature of the universe and its origins, and if so suspension of judgment might well be warranted. But if we judge on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">available</i> evidence, however inadequate, Feuerbach is correct that agnosticism will collapse into atheism, and Russell concurs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Another problem arises when we notice that the question is not merely an intellectual curiosity. Our view of these matters may have direct implications for how we live our lives. If we claim not to know about God one way or the other, do we then make choices as though there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">might</i> be a God (of a particular sort)? If so, we will be strongly tempted to buy at least a few tickets to Pascal’s lottery, which will look to an atheist like a monstrous misuse of resources, and to a theist like a cynical hedge. The agnostic might reply: I suspend judgment about both the existence of a God, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> the way of life any possible God might prescribe – a sensible move, though it has the consequence that the agnostic’s way of life will be indistinguishable from that of the atheist. This is not necessarily a bad thing – there are plenty of non-theistic reasons for attempting to live morally – but once again it makes it difficult to maintain agnosticism as a distinct position.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Many people call themselves agnostics, but it seems to remain an open question whether there is such a position, distinct from atheism. I welcome further attempts to characterize it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Mathew Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">From One Thing Into Another</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Barry Sullivan</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Being the ultimate relativist, I am always looking</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">For relations between things and how things change</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From one thing into another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I can see this pattern in the symbol of the Tao</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And in Einstein's theory of relativity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I see it also in nature, where from birth</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Until death we are forever changing</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From one thing into another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I see it in Socrates' arguments, where it seems,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">He is always striving to maintain balance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I believe that Socrates, because of his age</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Had observed that, what goes up, must come down</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And that things will forever change</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From one thing into another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I know also, that we only exist at the whim</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Of the creator, who by the way, is no other</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Than you and me, and my words are like</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The “finger pointing at the moon” and</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It is up to us where we choose to look</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">To see one thing or another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And I/We am the observer as things change</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From one thing into another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">So life goes on from birth till death</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From dust to dust and stardust to stardust</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Mass to energy, wave to particle and back again</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The universe is forever changing</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From one thing into another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From a boy to a man, surf bum to cab driver</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From a miner to a chef, a son to a father to</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student to teacher to poet and philosopher</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I am what I am and what I am forever changes</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">From one thing into another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Barry Sullivan is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-90735270456743673562012-06-08T18:05:00.003-04:002012-06-08T18:05:00.523-04:00Volume 18.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt;"><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Castellar","serif";">THESIS XII</span></i></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 18 • Number 1</span></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Copyright September, 2010</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><h4 class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">: </span></h4><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Keane Lundt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Gift Genuine </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kristina P. McGrath</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">A Valuable Tale of Socks and Supper</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew Roiter</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Observers as Participants in Art</span><b> </b> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Bryan Acton</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Grading and Fairness </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Gift Genuine</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Keane Lundt</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A genuine gift is an empathetic interchange of nurturance. By genuine, we <i>mean</i> honest constructive development and exercise of virtuous character traits. (1) A gift, in this sense, is not a concrete externality, or tangible thing; it is<i> </i>rather a <i>wish fulfilled</i> in physical and spiritual <i>Eudaimonia</i>. (2) A genuine gift identifies pleasures, needs, and motives of individual free will – our universal nature unites this realized <i>self</i> in a correspondent structure of adapted <i>selves</i>-and, in the process, engenders a reciprocal nurturance that aims at the highest good - a life of happiness and purpose.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">We customarily perceive and exchange objects as gifts, or <i>presents</i>. (3) As a consequence, we might negate or transfigure a thing’s <i>original purpose, </i>(4) and smuggle in a counterfeit substitute of sorts that masquerades as good intent. Designating an object as a gift might undermine its original status. I.e., the objects we exalt are susceptible also to exploitation. The consummation and</span><span style="color: #29303b; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">preservation of a pure gift-exchange requires that a genuine gift not collapse into something <i>bought-and-sold,</i> a thing predominantly of market value. If an object, as a Kantian <i>thing-in-itself, </i>or<i> </i>sentient beings as <i>ends-in-themselves,</i> inherently possess and protect dignitary interests (<i>noumenon</i>, freedom), what responsibilities, and considerations, do we share when we stipulate a <i>thing</i> as gift?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gift Subjective </span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The familiar adage, “It’s the thought that counts” seems straightforward enough, but might be misleading -- and, imbued in the phrase<i> </i>are ambiguities that imply a subjective and one-dimensional requisite for success. I.e., a thought is <i>all</i> that matters -- and as thoughts are the estates or property of thinking subjects, I can know, and am responsible for my thoughts only - it is now a case of <i>my </i>thoughts that count or matter. Often, we might receive a present, (or object as gift), that does not best reflect our interests or needs; and may even appear inauthentic or hypocritical. In these cases, we might appreciate the thought -- but we acknowledge also this particular act of gift-giving as barren (to a degree) and disingenuous.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In <i>Gift Subjective, </i>the first stage of gift evolution, our primary concern is the recognition and <i>virtuous assertion of free will</i> in relation to others. Yet, the <i>self</i> in this initial stage is underdeveloped and at risk of focusing solely on inner wants, needs, and expectations. Averting the possible allure of this somewhat infantile phase is vital as we progress into a fully realized state of self-awareness. Empathy is the key principle for all subsequent growth and action; and, though a healthy, mindful self-regard is imperative, we must also forge ahead into <i>Gift Objective </i>to avoid potentially destructive and unhealthy relations. In the formative stages of <i>Gift</i> <i>Subjective,</i> we might say: ‘It’s the<i> genuine </i>thought that counts’.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gift Objective</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gift Subjective,</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> as a process of self-examination, (5) is the exercise and discipline of practical reason (<i>logos praktikos</i>) – and, the root of what we have to give. (6) Aristotle (<i>Physics</i>) prescribes a method of investigation that begins with what is most evident to us (though intrinsically more obscure), and proceeds towards what is intrinsically more intelligible. We begin with subjective inference and understanding (general character of things, <i>katholou</i>), and progress to universal validity, or as much exactness allowed by nature’s subjects. In this sense, dialectic (progressive investigation of sound opinion, (<i>doxa</i>) represents the first step from plausibility to objective truth. Demonstration is a means for establishing truth, i.e., what things really are as opposed to what we think they are (or want them to be). It is evident that we indeed have individual qualities such as thoughts, desires, and personalities, but we are dependent on nature (and nurture) for our survival. Because of this fact, we share a mutual obligation to preserve the health of our global infrastructure; gifts define what it means to be fully human. (7)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">We might say genuine gifts are in a state of <i>becoming </i>(not rigid entities that serve an intended purpose and perish) -- though they are <i>actual </i>things, they are endowed with a <i>potentiality </i>that might manifest in unexpected and unforeseen ways. (8) A giver need not have a specific or individual recipient in mind; and persons might hear indirectly of a genuine gift and be motivated to action. (9) As <i>Gift subjective</i> awakens and nurtures our creative spirit and capacity for empathy-<i>Gift Objective</i> instructs us in the act of doing; our potential is actualized. Absent an object symbolizing a gift exchange, a giver possesses a mind in contemplation of a well-developed sense of moral good. We strive to exercise virtuous traits for the betterment of everyone, i.e., <i>via</i> the particular recipient(s) of a gift. Our intended purpose defines initially the gift; our purpose actualized <i>is</i> the gift. Maintaining the cycle of a genuine gift, though natural, is not altogether effortless or agreeable. We are in a struggle with the comprehensive notion of what living a good and just life is—it may be many things to many people, but what we might demand is that our actions not be injurious or oppressive to other sentient beings, and the world at large. (10) </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The aphorism, “pay it forward” emphasizes a social responsibility and investment in the real world; we keep the genuine gift alive as a sort of social loan or general indebtedness to others. A gift’s vitality has the requisite condition of perpetual extension, and depends upon our ability to empathize with those in need. We do whatever it takes, within reason, to empower and inspire other persons to perform similar acts of kindness; this is our duty, and a <i>moral imperative</i> of great importance and significance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gift Genuine</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There are no hard and distinct separations between the phases of gift evolution; moral improvement is a matter of degree. <i>Gift Genuine</i> is the culmination of our current understanding of things - but this is not an absolute set of fixed points; and, any definition of <i>Gift Genuine</i> possesses the ability to incorporate further knowledge about all things. <i>Gift Genuine</i> is a state of moral action (<i>praxis</i>), and purposeful choice (<i>proairesis</i>). We give and receive gifts with purpose -- we <i>give</i> to foster good will, and we <i>accept</i> this kindness knowing that it comes with a reciprocal obligation. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Our Hegelian inspired abstraction and separation of <i>gift</i> from <i>object</i> unites several key first principles in a genuine gift interchange. I.e. empathy, discipline, moral development, and what Hegel refers to as “virtuous consciousness”. Each of us has a universal nature – a truth that reflects an objective state of affairs – of the good, wise, and virtuous. Hegel (<i>Phenomenology of Mind</i>) illustrates this point:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The good or universal as it appears here, is, then, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">what is called <i>Gifts</i>, <i>Capacities</i>, <i>Powers</i>. It is a mode or form of spiritual life, where the spiritual life is presented as a universal, which requires the principle of individuality to give it life and movement, and in individuality finds its realization. This universal is <i>applied well</i> by the principle of individuality so far as this principle dwells in the consciousness of virtue, and <i>misused</i> by it as far as it is in the world’s process— a passive instrument, which is regulated and directed by the hand of free individuality and is quite indifferent to the use it is put to, and can be misused for the production of a reality which means its ruin: a lifeless material that can be formed in this way or that, or even to its own destruction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Is the division of object and gift permanent and absolute, or might some objects serve as presents or gifts without sacrificing <i>original purpose</i>? Is our energy entangled in inanimate objects (or sentient beings) to such a degree that might exempt some <i>things</i> from commercialization? Is there anything truly that we will not sell (surrender all rights and possession) at any price, including our <i>estate</i>, our self? (11) Might objects survive a sort of metamorphosis from a <i>thing</i> to a <i>gift</i> in a similar way that the butterfly emerges from the caterpillar? One thing is certain; we must know the origins of objects we consider for such a change in purpose. (12) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gift Subjective</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">, <i>Gift Objective</i>, and, <i>Gift Genuine</i>, nurture our capacity to empathize with other persons, animals, our immediate environment, and the world. <i>Gift Genuine</i> actualizes our potential and exercise of virtuous traits. As moral agents of sentiment and reason, it is our duty to engender inherent, and possibly latent, creative <i>gifts </i>that stimulate individual and societal happiness. We have within our will (<i>proairesis</i>) the power (<i>dynamis</i>) to follow reason, to define and steer our own course. A deliberate affirmation of life is the <i>telic determinant</i> of virtuous persons. Exuberant vitality, creativity, assertion of free will, friendly affection (<i>philia</i>), pedagogy, love (and many other states of character (<i>hexis</i>), qualities) are <i>gifts</i> that necessitate passion, discipline, empathy, and zeal. (13) </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Notes</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">1. A capacity for virtue must manifest itself through the exercise of ethical behavior in relation to others; this relationship distinguishes <i>knowing</i> from <i>doing</i>. But, what precisely <i>is</i> virtue, is it nature or nurture? In the <i>Apology</i>, Socrates regards virtue and wisdom as the highest goods. Also, in <i>Gorgias</i>, he views wisdom, virtue, and happiness as inextricably linked; if one possesses virtue, they cannot fail to be happy. See (506c5-e4) where Socrates treats virtue as a principle of goodness; and, as a source of goodness, virtue itself must be good. Virtue consists of the rational and appetitive parts of the soul – justice and temperance ensure harmonious order, while lack of virtue represents a state of inner conflict reflected in utter chaos. (<i>Gorgias</i> 504d1-e4) See also Hegel’s <i>Phenomenology of Mind, (Virtue and the Course of the World).</i> For the view that virtue is excellence, and of two kinds – intellectual (practical and theoretical wisdom) and moral (good character developed by discipline and habit), see Aristotle, (<i>The Nicomachean Ethics, BookII)</i>.<i> </i>Virtue is the supreme goal of human endeavor. Kant (<i>Critique of Judgment</i>) defines morality, and ethical standards, in themselves authoritative. I.e. Religion and law are insufficient devices to determine (absolutely) what is moral from what is immoral.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">2. A genuine gift’s effects need not require the actualization of an object. The physical embodiment of an exchange of nurturance is recognizable in emotional, societal, and, economical stability and solidarity. The Greek term <i>Euadimonia </i>means happiness, good will (or possession) of the spirit or soul. Happiness is the supreme good in and of itself (<i>teleios</i>). It is the good will of society as a whole that we refer to here – humans are by nature social (political) – supreme happiness is a relationship between persons, not a subjective singularity. </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">3. Traditionally, we give presents on birthdays and holidays with no return gift expected (but perhaps acknowledgment of some sort is obligatory). Aristotle in book <i>IV Topica</i> states, “A present is a grant that need not be returned”. Also, innate abilities, such as an exceptional talent or skill often are viewed as gifts (possibly from divine sources) as is a charismatic personality. (From the Greek χάρισμα <i>(kharisma)</i>, "gift" or "divine favor”.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">4. Original purpose <i>means</i> that existing objects have a function prior to our conceptualization and usage (of things) as gifts. Things we construct specifically for use as gifts also define original purpose.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">5. See <i>Socratic Self-examination</i>, Keane S. Lundt, <i>Thesis XII, A Philosophical review</i>-Volume 16.2,3-09</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">6. A genuine gift <i>means</i> that we have something to give-we are in possession of, or have a capacity for, empathy-and in each phase of understanding, we give to others knowing that this act is obligatory. We are not self-sufficient creatures, and therefore do not have rights to withhold anything (in our possession but not in our usage) that others might benefit from. Objects, given as presents, are often used to symbolize a generic offering that might invoke a history seemingly detached from a genuine connection between giver and receiver. A giver’s energy, (or <i>psyche</i>, Greek meaning soul, life force, breath) is integral to a gift’s authenticity.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">7. Locke posits that we, our <i>selves</i>, are property; “every man [person] has a <i>property</i> in his [her] own <i>person</i>”. Our <i>estates</i> mark the beginning of property and entitle us to the means necessary for survival; and, our usage (derived from our labor in taking from the <i>commons</i>) marks the beginning of external personal property and might extend beyond the essentials to include other things, or <i>advantages </i>within reason, that aid in our enjoyment and pursuit of a happy life. Locke’s <i>spoilage proviso</i> prevents us from taking more than our legitimate share-“yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was still left to those who would use the same industry”. (<i>Second Treatise of Government-V. Of Property, John Locke, 1690</i>) For Hegel, the attainment of property external to our selves defines us as persons. We “impose” our will onto the environment and others in our development from “mere consciousness” to “pure consciousness”. Hegelian <i>Mind Subjective</i>, <i>Mind Objective</i>, and, <i>Mind Absolute</i>, represent the three phases of human development. (<i>The Phenomenology of Mind-G.W.F. Hegel, 1910</i>) “External goods”, (i.e. good birth, beauty, goodly children, and good fortune) for Aristotle, are the <i>proper equipment</i> to perform noble acts-the <i>means</i> to be truly happy. Inner goods, such as health and virtue, are necessary also to live a noble life. “The good of man [persons] should be a lover of self.” (<i>Book IV.8,1169a Nicomachean Ethics</i>, <i>Aristotle. </i>J.L. Ackrill) “Those, then, who busy themselves in an exceptional degree with noble actions all men [persons] approve and praise; and if <i>all</i> were to strive towards what is noble and strain every nerve to do the noblest deeds, everything would be as it should for the common weal, and everyone would secure for himself [herself] the goods that are greatest, since virtue is the greatest of goods.”</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">8. I.e., to guard against the infiltration of consumerist culture into the classroom-knowledge must not be reduced to inactive information. The idea that learning is directed <i>at </i>students, rather than incorporating them is an error and incompatible with the acquisition of knowledge, and results only in confusion and the accumulation of stuff. A professor that relays information as if it is a <i>thing-it-itself</i>; is not engaging in a</span><span style="color: #29303b; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">genuine gift exchange; students are burdened ultimately with things they do not understand truly, and to process, or make sense of, this data we convert it to stuff. Pedagogy (i.e. in a partially improvisational manner) nurtures and solidifies the root of a student’s understanding of <i>doing</i>. An interactive professor-student relationship is a genuine gift interchange that maintains a productive cycle of gift giving. A gift in this sense might be retroactive-and, <i>all</i> genuine gifts, regardless of length of dormancy or cultivation, come to fruition.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">9. The Arts might be considered a gift to humanity. See Lewis Hyde’s, <i>The Gift</i>, Vintage Books, 1997.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">10. We cannot violate any sentient being(s) basic right to life. Our ethical code of conduct and moral action (<i>praxis</i>) reflects what it means to be a rational agent. </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">11. See Marcell Mauss, <i>The Gift</i>, (Norton 1990-first published 1950) for one example, “The <i>taonga</i> and all goods termed strictly possess a <i>hau</i>, a spiritual power. You give me one of them, and I pass it on to a third party; he gives another to me in turn, because he is impelled to do so by the <i>hau</i> my present possesses. I, for my part, am obliged to give you what is in reality the effect of the <i>hau </i>of your <i>taonga</i>.” <i>Toanga</i>, in Maori law and religion, <i>means</i> possessions or precious articles such as talisman, or sacred idols. </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">12. Objects are subject to the same critical analysis present in <i>Gift Subjective</i>-our intent and practice of virtuous principles accompanies all possible exchanges of things. Origin <i>means</i> knowing by whom objects are/were constructed - the source of all parts - means and methods of operation/production – in other words, we want to know what ethical standards individuals and corporations promote and subscribe to (practice). All of these elements make a whole.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">13. I thank David Johnson, Matthew Silliman, and Gerol Petruzella for their genuine gifts to pedagogy. I am especially indebted to Matthew Silliman for his many helpful suggestions.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Keane Lundt is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">A Valuable Tale of Socks and Supper</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kristina P. McGrath</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I made a real supper for my family tonight. Lately I have been throwing together anything, and it’s made my job seem a little less valuable. I felt more valuable tonight, and I wondered if the supper itself is more valuable as well. Is it then more valuable because it was prepared by loving hands, too? Or is food food, no matter what it is or where it comes from? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What gives something value? The definition of value is its rate in usefulness or importance. If I take too long to knit socks for my sister because I’m struggling with technique and poor materials, then victoriously complete them, but they don’t fit her, do they lose value? Can the socks be valuable because of the time and effort put into them, or are they rendered </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">non-valuable</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> because they have no usefulness to their possessor? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socks that fit may have more value than ones that don’t, but my work is still valuable regardless of the fit, because of my intrinsic value as a human being. Even though my sister might never wear her socks, she will always treasure them because of my efforts. Furthermore, any hand-knit socks, even made by a stranger, would hold more value, even if too big, than socks made by a machine, whether they fit or not, because of the work and time a person put into them. Just as a person values themselves and their work, so are they valuable. How valuable are their efforts to another?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Who places value? When my son makes me a drawing in preschool, it is valuable to me because he made it, because his work is valuable, regardless of what it looks like. However, when he makes me a train out of his blocks, it is more valuable to me than the drawing because my son doesn’t like to draw, and worked harder to build that train (no matter what it looks like,) and enjoyed doing it. I value the train more, even as it is temporary, because he values it more, and his values are important to me. Conversely, my thrown-together supper including hot dogs is perhaps more valuable to him, as he loves hot dogs, than my nice and balanced meal tonight, which included string beans. He holds no regard for what I find valuable when it comes to supper, or the uselessness of hot dogs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Does the value of something (the supper or the socks) increase or decrease depending on </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">from whom they came</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">? Even if I’m not your mother, I worked just as hard to make your supper. I claim that the food retains the same value, as does the person’s work, regardless of who that person is, but if it is prepared by your mother or friend, it may have more value to you personally (like my son’s gifts to me,) because of how you value them. Similarly, if you are angry with whomever prepared your food, you might find it holds no value at all and refuse to eat it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A person who places no value on a person’s work (other than his own,) may not find these things valuable, but these things still retain their inherent value, by virtue of the effort given in creating them. When we talk about how valuable a thing is regarding people, and people’s work, especially those we love, the amount of value becomes very subjective, and those hot dogs and trains and too-big socks, might end up being our greatest gifts, however useless, because of their importance to us. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Kristina P. McGrath is an alumna of MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Observers as Participants in Art</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew Roiter</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: So he says that there's no difference between going to a concert and listening to a record with extremely high quality headphones.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: That's ridiculous. He really said that?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Yeah, and I told him, 'There are so many sensory experiences that you don't get with just listening to the music. There's the band's presence and the lights...</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: Not to mention the crowd.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Right, wait. What do you mean?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: The crowd, it feeds off of the energy of the band and the band feeds of the energy of the crowd. The quality of the crowd </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">and</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> totally change the concert experience.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: So, by that logic they are contributors to the performance.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: Right.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: How do you figure? </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Well, let's suppose that the individual performance is its own work of art. Completely unique from every other</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> performance.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: But it’s not. It’s an exact copy of the artwork. It’s all one piece of art just being showcased multiple times. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Are we working off of the same definition of art?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: I thought so.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: Enlighten me.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: A work of art is the use of a medium for the realization of creative intentions. How does that suit you?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: Fine</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: Yeah, that’s good.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Alright. So an artist plans to go on a concert tour. The artist has a plan for how the show is supposed to play out. But he knows that the experience will be different at each venue.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: And he knows this how?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Would you admit that there is a difference between seeing a performance at Times Square and seeing a performance at the school auditorium?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: Of course.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: But what makes the difference?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: The difference is in the setting, obviously. One has more meaning attached to it than the other.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: So, would you say that if the setting alters the art, then it is a part of the work of art?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: In what way?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: In the same way that an actor is manipulated by the director. The performance is the work of art. The actors, the stage and the setting are his paint, his somewhat controlled factors that alter and make up the art work.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: What if the director doesn’t choose his setting? Is it still part of the art?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Without intentionality? No.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: We really should amend the original thesis. Let’s say that the crowd, can, but doesn’t necessarily alter the art.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: I’m comfortable with saying that.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: The change is noted, but I’m not sold on the idea that the individual performance is its own work of art.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Fine, we’ll continue. If we have two works of art, with the same subject matter, but some different aspects then they are different works of art. For instance the Virgin on the Rocks by DaVinci, would you contend that the two versions of it are the same work of art?</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: No, I wouldn’t. They are physically two different paintings, with similar characteristics.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: So there is a significant difference between two performances of the same show in two different settings with two different crowds.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: Right.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: And we’ve established that two art objects of the same subject matter, but with significant intentional differences are different art objects.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: Correct…</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: So then it logically follows that if an artist intends for the performance to feed off of the crowd and setting to change the performance, then it is a new work of art.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: Yes, it does. I see where you’re going with this.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Therefore, a crowd can be a part of the art in a degree not equal to, but somewhat comparable to the performers.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter: As long as it’s ‘can be’ and not ‘is’, then I’m comfortable with it.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Valentine: That makes sense to me.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew: Alright, we’re all in agreement.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Andrew Roiter is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Grading and Fairness</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Bryan Acton</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A (excited): Hello!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: Hey. What are you so excited about?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: My Professor scaled the final grades of the semester in my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Issues in Education</i> Class. I got the only A in the class! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: That’s because only one person <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> get an A once the professor scales the grades!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: Have you taken the class?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: I am taking it this semester in a different section. I am going to get a B. Taking this course from this prof was the worse choice I have made in 3 years of college. I never knew scaled grading was this unfair.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: It’s not the fault of scaled grading that you didn’t get an A; you should have worked harder.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: Actually, It <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> the fault of scaled grading, and I can tell you exactly why. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: Okay, Let’s hear it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: Well, when I compared our two classes, I noticed that my class clearly performed better than your class. This made me realize that if I had been in your class I would have clearly received an A. Not only that, but if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> had been in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> section, you might not even have received a B! It is clearly not fair that, for equivalent academic performance, you receive a different grade depending on what section you are in.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: I understand your argument, but it has a major problem. You are not taking into account the fact that the other students in your class have a major influence on you. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: What do you mean?</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: If you had been in my class, then you probably would not have performed as well as you did, because there were different students competing with you. My class did more poorly overall, and therefore there was less motivation to do well. In fact, you actually might have done worse in my class because there were not many students who would have been pushing you to do better. I will explain this by using the example of running a marathon. In a race like this, only one person can get first place and the best prize. This competition is great because each competitor performs better than he or she normally would, mainly because he or she is being motivated by the other competitors. It is also not fair for a given competitor to compare his race to a different race, because many circumstances in each race were different. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: While I do not necessarily agree with your example, I think I can use your type of example to explain my point of view. Let’s say there was an important marathon; there were only fifty runners, and each runner had to qualify to compete in the race; the competitors could be of any age, but to qualify they had to fulfill two requirements. To compete in the race, a runner had to have had received a time in a pre-trial that was lower than a certain cut-off time. The second requirement was that the people who wished to compete in the race must have placed in a race before, but these races had to have certain qualifications (it had to be a race where the competitors were in the same age group etc.). Does this sound good so far?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: I don’t see where you are going with this, but keep going. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: Okay, well, I will be focusing on one competitor in this story. He is a 17 year old, who I will name Metaphor. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: Funny name.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: Yes, it is. The majority of the competitors were between the ages of 22 and 30. At , 17, Metaphor was by far the youngest competitor – the next youngest competitor was 21. Metaphor was excited about the race because he just barely made it into the competition. He received a time slightly faster than the cutoff time in the pre-trials. The rest of the competitors beat the cutoff time by a large amount. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: Wait one second. That does not make any sense. If the cutoff time was easy for the older competitors, then why would there not be a bunch of competitors in that prime age group who qualified for the race? It seems like more than fifty competitors should have been able to beat that cutoff time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: You forgot about the second qualification. To qualify for the race, each runner had previously to place in a race within his or her age group. Even though many people in the prime age group could have beaten the cutoff time, they could not compete because they did not fill the second requirement. Metaphor barely qualified for the race because he won a race within his age group and he scarcely beat the cutoff time. Do you understand? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: Yes, I do now. Metaphor seems like he was a rare competitor for this race.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: Yes, he was, but Metaphor trained hard for this race because he wanted first place and nothing less. He wanted first place because the winner received an invitation to join the best running team in the world, and he could not join the team without first place. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: Wow! It sounds like Metaphor really wanted to win! So, what happened?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: Well Metaphor ran extremely well; he ran a lot better than he ever had before. The competition pushed him to a level of performance that he could never have imagined. He broke every record for marathoners in his age group. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: So, I assume he got first place!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: No, he came in third. The two runners who finished ahead of him were both at the prime age of competition. Metaphor could not beat them because their bodies were much more prepared for the challenge that the race posed. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: Wait, that is not fair! Metaphor should not be even competing against people older than him! At least he should receive his own prize because he broke all of the records for his age group!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: I think you are right. Metaphor should have received the top prize because he broke all the records for his own age. Competition that involves this type of difference of ability is not fair, especially when the first prize is so important for the competitors. I think we just solved our problem about scaled grading. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: What do you mean?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: If you haven’t noticed, my example of this competition is just a method for showing the process of scaled grading within a normal college class. In most college classes, students with all different levels of ability are trying to get an A; the idea that different age groups all wanted first prize in the race stands for this. The idea that first place receives a coveted invitation to a racing team is an analogy for As leading to a good resume, which in turn leads to further career and education opportunities. Metaphor’s situation shows that it is not fair for students with different abilities to be competing against each other for such an important reward (a high grade). All students who do A work should be rewarded with an A (beating a cutoff time). Education is supposed to involve students competing with themselves, and not others. There is a time and a place for competition between different people, but a college course is not one. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: I understand what you are saying, but I think you are forgetting that competition is a great thing; it provides students with the encouragement to do better.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person B: I am not saying that competition is bad; a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">certain kind</i> of competition is a great thing in many places, including the educational environment. That said, zero-sum games are not the type of competition that fosters learning. The classroom environment should be a place where students provide mutual encouragement for one another. Students should be motivated to do their work because they want to impress their fellow students with excellent academic performance, and delight together in that shared accomplishment. There is absolutely no reason why students should ever want another student to perform poorly; this is one of the major problems with using zero-sum games in a classroom environment. Students become obsessed with receiving a certain grade, or with one-upping each other, and they forget about the main reason they are in college is to learn. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Person A: I think I understand what you’re saying. You think students should be competing with themselves to do better because of the encouragement they receive from their classmates. It seems like zero-sum games might not belong in the education environment, but I don’t know if I can fully agree with this right now. I sure liked getting the only A in my class. I will have to think about it.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Bryan Acton is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-41037026159817327432012-06-08T18:00:00.002-04:002012-06-08T17:28:25.109-04:00Volume 17.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><style>
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<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Castellar", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Castellar;">THESIS XII</span></i></h1><h1 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><h4 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Volume 17 • Number 1</span></h4><h4 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">December, 2009</span></span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">: <span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen Kullas</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Defining and Defending Altruism<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Shelby Giaccarini</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Organic Farming</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Benjamin Hollows</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Plato & Myth</span><b><span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jacob A. Wheeler</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Danto’s Slippers<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Defining and Defending Altruism</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen Kullas</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(Stephen enters)</span></i><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are just flat out wrong!<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dismissing my arguments dogmatically now are we Joe?<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whoa, Whoa! Take it easy! What is going on?<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nick opened his mouth and, as usual, let utter garbage fall from it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Ad hominem </i>attack; truly pathetic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ok you two, just what are you arguing about?</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nick, ever the optimist, thinks that humans are altruists.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There you go putting words in my mouth, I said that we have the <i>capacity</i> for altruism, and that it may even be commonplace.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What it actually has come down to, is that we disagree with the definition of altruism, and so we cannot continue further.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, Joe defines altruism as an act of good for the benefit of others, in which the actor gains no conscious benefit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas Nick thinks it is any act of self sacrifice for the benefit of others. We have simply reached an impasse.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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?</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do, that is my exact claim.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I think I see your point, but my definition’s inadequacies hardly makes Nick’s better.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, given a choice between the two, I would be inclined to choose Nick’s definition, with one amendment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh?</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have painted yourself into a corner now, as we cannot know what a person’s central reason for action is!</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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’ <i>cogito</i>, 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.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, then the burden of proof is on you. Show me an example of this commonplace altruism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well it would seem that parenthood, under your definition, is indeed an institution in which altruism is commonplace. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then it is settled.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not so fast. I think your cost-benefit analyses may trick you into seeing altruism where there is none.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do you mean?</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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 <i>because</i> he <b>is</b> an altruist; otherwise he simply would not care. So if altruism were impossible then the guilt would not exist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have certainly come a long way from the definitional impasse.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Joe:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two against one, it was hardly fair…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stephen Kullas is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Organic Farming</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Shelby Giaccarini</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Humans have a moral obligation to buy organic food, because organic farming is better for the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The environment is, at least, instrumentally valuable to humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Better for the environment” means better than conventionally grown food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Organic animals are not given antibiotics or growth hormones. (1) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Organic food is better for the environment because it does not contain pesticides or fertilizers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pesticides poison the soil and water, and have been linked with the deaths of fish and birds. (2)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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)</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Organic farming is also better for the environment because it does not use antibiotics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The lack of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, also makes organic farming better for the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Herbicide-resistant crops and virus-resistant crops are the most popular genetic modifications to plants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">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. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">One may object to this thesis by questioning whether organic farming is <i>enough</i> 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)</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This objection is most likely correct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems, then, that perhaps buying organic food is only one piece of the puzzle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buying local, small-scale, and in-season food may be at least as big of a factor as organic is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">1. www.organic.org/education/faqs</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">2. www.pmac.net/bird_fish_CA.html</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">3. www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>summary/sci;285/5428/661d</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">4. www.tufts.edu/med/apua/Ecology/EIA.html</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">5. Michael Pollan, <i>The Omnivore’s Dilemma</i> p. 78</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">6. www.saynotogmos.org/ud2006/ <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>usept06.php#confused</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">7. http://www.alternet.org/environment/19628</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">8. Michael Pollan, <i>The Omnivore’s Dilemma</i><u> </u>p. 182</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Shelby Giaccarini is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Plato & Myth</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Benjamin Hollows</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">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 <i>Republic</i>, 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. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When revealing theological notions accessible to anyone, the nature of myth as a story (<i>mythos</i>=story) is appealing because it is a means more engaging<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for the (uninitiated) hearer than straightforward doctrinal discourse. As Plato notes in<i> Statesman</i>, 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 <i>Republic</i>, 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.<b> </b>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 <i>Republic</i>. (2)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0in 0.7in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0in 0.7in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Despite such repeated criticisms, Plato uses myth throughout <i>Republic</i>, 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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the safety of the public, <i>Republic </i>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 <i>Republic</i> and <i>Phaedo</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">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 (<i>Rep. </i>509-511).<b> </b>Humans have knowledge of certain forms within the mind, as humans were once acquainted with their nature (4) and images can help one <i>recollect </i>this<i> </i>knowledge, as shown in <i>Meno</i> (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 <i>Phaedrus</i>, for example, and the images it conjures may help one recollect knowledge of the nature of soul (248); also in <i>Phaedrus</i>, the image of a loved one helps one recollect the form of Beauty (251a).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Before giving an explanation of the origin and nature of the universe, <i>Timaeus</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i>Phaedrus</i>, 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. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">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.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">1. For Plato, the ‘Greek Mystery Religions’ of Orpheus and Eleusis, as well as Pythagorean teachings </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">2. Plato stresses cultivating the rational portion of the soul; the exaltation of our emotional side is something to avoid. (<i>Republic</i> 605)</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">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.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">4. Souls within humans glimpsed forms before becoming ensnared in bodies; see <i>Phaedrus</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">References</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Plato. <i>Phaedrus</i>. Translated by Alexander Nehamas & Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1995.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plato. <i>Republic</i>. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1992.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Plato. <u>Five Dialogues</u>. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2002.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plato. <i>Timaeus</i>. Translated by Peter Kalkavage. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Plato.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Statesman</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Translated by J.B. Skemp. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1957.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Benjamin Hollows is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Danto’s Slippers</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jacob A. Wheeler</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“...The key then is to be able to distinguish between perceptually indistinguishable counterparts.”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>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.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“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.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Just in time” Arthur smiled to himself as he gathered his case and left.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>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.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 8pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>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.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 8pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m telling you dear” Arthur protested, “It was magnificent.”</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m sure it was.”</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“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.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Jacob A. Wheeler is a student at MCLA</span></i></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-75280985097199958402012-06-08T17:55:00.002-04:002012-06-08T17:30:03.318-04:00Volume 16.2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><style>
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<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Castellar", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Castellar;">THESIS XII</span></i></h1><h1 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Volume 16 • Number 2</span><b><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"> </span></b></h4><h4 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">March, 2009</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">INSIDE THIS ISSUE</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">: <span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Keane S. Lundt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Socratic Self-Examination<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Louis E. Stelling</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Sociolinguistic Lessons for the </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Classroom</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Benjamin Hollows</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Socrates’ Body and Soul</span><b><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Daniel Sadlocha</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">The Way of Objectivity</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Derek Anderson</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">A Cup of Coffee Refused at Peter’s </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;">Place</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Juice ITC"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Juice ITC";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Mistral;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin-left: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Socratic Self-Examination</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Keane S. Lundt</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Humankind may not survive into the 22<sup>nd</sup> century without self-examination. By self-examination I mean<i> </i>an in-depth analysis of how we live our lives, a rigorous investigation of the social mores of our time. Self-examination is an internal dialogue that questions everything sequentially, retrospectively, and consequentially. For the curious mind, it is a desideratum in the coalescence and refinement of <i>Sensus</i> <i>communis</i> (1) and systematically learned knowledge.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Critical thinking, such as Socratic self-examination (2), procures thoughtful deliberation as a core principle and necessary condition for clarity of thought. Careful observance and consideration of our needs and wants (3) postulates wisdom and moderation in our decision-making processes, while insightful discourse invigorates the faculties, both of our emotional embodiment and our mental perception. Our direct participation in experience, the <i>doing</i>, is essential to pragmatic investigations positing empirical reasoning; we gain hands-on edification through our command, scrutiny, and assiduous reexamination of potentially available or accessible information (4). Questioning personal and societal convention challenges us to think introspectively, ontologically, and cosmologically about the choices we make; and primes us in our defense, modification, or eschewal of previously selected preferences. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Self-examination builds our confidence...strengthens our alliances...and secures our place in this world as thoughtful self-reflective individuals having the distinguishing characteristics of personal responsibility, compassion, and stewardship encompassing a comprehensive worldview. Self-examination has palpable short and long-term health benefits as well; mental exercise nurtures and maintains maximum cognitive ability as we grow older, staving off potential neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and other dementia (5).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The self-examiner guards against tendencies to conform to unchallenged dogmas, age-old </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">traditions, untested convictions, as well as modern commercialization presented in the guise of camaraderie and sanctioned mass acceptance (6). Impassioned patient and respectful inquiry may reveal blind spots and subconscious patterns of behavior that contribute to conscious repetition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Periodical excavations into the self are necessary to prevent self-deception from convincing us that our most significant and protected principles are universally and unconditionally sound. Self-examination brings to fruition our desire to know the truth about ourselves; and develops an exigent “moral courage” (7) that fortifies our inevitable confrontation with truth as we understand it, meritoriously noting that it may not be harmonious with the life we want to live.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Self-examination instills in us both a humility and efficacy; we are aware of our infallibility and fragility, but also of our strength and purpose. Self-examination instructs us, through constructive analysis and argument, how to live a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>life that considers all humanity, the animal kingdom, and planet Earth. As self-examiners we acknowledge our importance as individuals. We celebrate our uniqueness in a global community. And, we embrace inherent responsibility prevalent in all of our behaviors and actions, aware of the significant incremental impact on a global level. Self-examination is a primer for such ethical questions as: How should we live? Do we strive for personal, or universal happiness? Shall we aim at morality, virtue, truth, or the aesthetically beautiful?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do we have an ethical obligation to future generations of life? </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Self-examination is necessary for us to begin to understand goodness. Integrity, honesty, and compassion for all creatures sharpens our perception, informs our judgment, and ignites our imagination in the creation of a forum where our greatest potential is realized in simple and noble achievements. Self-examination propels us into important, yet fun, discussions that engage our skepticism and stimulate our innate ability to live a purposeful life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">1.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> Literally <i>common sense</i>, the phrase denotes not only widespread belief, but more widely a shared sensibility. </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">2. Socrates’ method of critical analysis and argument exercised a form of questioning employed to draw out elusive, dormant, or subconscious truth and insight in his interlocutors.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">3. Kant posits needs and wants as conditional objectives that are not justifiable when moral obligation is superseded by a desire to reach selfish ends. Means, needs, wants, and longings must possess pure intent and each must exist as an “End in itself”. Ends arrived at by means possessing “moral duty” are intrinsically valid, virtuous, and universally good (Kant’s “Categorical Imperative”)<i>“Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”, 1785<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">4. “Public use of reason and unrestricted freedom is required for enlightenment.” Kant states that we must utilize native common sense and “have the courage to use our own understanding.” Not to do so is a case of “self-imposed immaturity”. <i>“An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” </i>1784 Berlincshe Monatsschrift.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">5. Mental exercise such as: decision making, language skills, social engagement, games, puzzles, music, and creativity, may promote the growth of additional synapses, the connection between neurons, and delay the onset of dementia. <i>The Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health. (</i>Alzheimer’s Association, 2008).</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">6. Some commercial advertising distracts and deceives consumers, and has an interest in keeping the public as uninformed as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">7.Silliman, <i>Sentience and Sensibility</i>, (Parmenides Publishing, 2006) 66.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Keane S. Lundt is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Sociolinguistic Lessons for the Language Classroom</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Louis E. Stelling</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When I conducted sociolinguistic interviews with Franco-American (1) consultants in Southbridge, Massachusetts in the summer of 2003, (2) I was intrigued by the linguistic behaviors of some of the informants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By examining the relationships between the language attitudes of these consultants and their willingness to use French, I will highlight ways in which lessons learned from the Franco-American community can be applied in the language classroom.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The informants who interested me the most can be divided into three groups.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first consisted of those who were able to have a conversation in French and translate complex sentences but who rarely or never used the language in their daily lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The second group of speakers did not want to be interviewed in French despite the fact that they were quite capable of speaking the language according to other members of the community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The third group understood French perfectly but struggled with limited productive skills throughout the conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, they were happy to do so and reportedly made similar efforts to use the language with others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It occurred to me that the first two scenarios lead to a diminished use of French.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For group one, this was due to the notion of impracticality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These speakers simply saw no use for French in their community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The language went unused by members of group two because of linguistic insecurity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regardless of how fluent these speakers were, they did not want to use French with an outsider because of negative feelings about their own speech.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the three groups, the third was the only one whose members promoted the use of French.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A positive attitude towards their mother tongue led these consultants to use it with others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we consider the three situations together, it is interesting that the choice of whether or not to continue to speak French has little or nothing to do with fluency and everything to with language attitudes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">If we apply this idea to language teaching, it becomes evident that in order to produce students who want to continue to learn and to use any language other than that of the majority around them, we must foster positive attitudes in the classroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Educators must help students to see the language as practical and useful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additionally, students must be made to feel that their efforts to speak more than one language are valued by native speakers, by teachers, and by others whose opinions matter to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As such, we must not confuse linguistic proficiency or communicative ability with strict adherence to prescriptive norms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our first priority must be to encourage students to use the language both inside and outside of the classroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Franco-American French has an undeserved reputation for being a kind of slang which is therefore unacceptable at school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In secondary and post-secondary schools in the Northeast, Franco-American students hear criticisms of typical North-American pronunciations such as [mwє] as opposed to the standard [mwa] in the word <i>moi</i> (‘me’).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is also the case for vocabulary such as the use of English borrowings (e.g. <i>bines</i> from ‘beans’) and archaic words like <i>char</i> or <i>machine</i> in lieu of <i>automobile</i> or <i>voiture</i> (‘car’).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With respect to grammar, structures such as the use of <i>avoir</i> (rather than <i>être</i>) to form the past tense of certain intransitive verbs are simply labeled as incorrect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Stelling (2006) demonstrates that there exists a cyclical relationship between schooling and Franco-American French which can be resumed as follows:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While bilingual Catholic parochial schools once promoted mother tongue maintenance, they also encouraged the abandonment of French by unintentionally classifying it as impractical or less valuable than English, since each language was relegated to specific subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>French was used for Canadian history, catechism, art, and music while English was used for courses which many viewed as more practical for entry into the workforce such as civics, mathematics and science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A shift from French to English then led to the end of bilingual schooling itself, which in turn led to increased exposure to hostile attitudes towards North American French in public schools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These negative views were imparted on Franco-American students themselves, which led to further abandonment of French.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In a healthy or stable cycle, schooling would encourage positive language attitudes that would in turn promote language maintenance and transmission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This would then justify more educational opportunities in the language, and so forth and so on. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What teachers can learn from the situations described above is that when dealing with native and heritage speakers of “nonstandard” varieties, linguistic prescription must not interfere with assigning a positive value to their mother tongue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such students must feel that all varieties are valid not only because of the unique cultures which they represent, but also because they are practical and useful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Additionally, educators must be devoted to developing healthy attitudes among all language learners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must stress that knowledge of a second language is a practical asset in the modern world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must also make students feel that, although they may not have perfected their skills as of yet, the way that they speak their developing second language is valued by those around them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">References</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Brault, Gérard J. 1979. “Le français en Nouvelle-Angleterre.” In Albert Valdman (Ed.) <i>Le Français hors de France</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Paris: Champion. 75-92. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Fox, Cynthia A. 2007. “Franco-American Voices: French in the Northeastern United States Today.” <i>The French Review</i>. 80.6. 1278-1292.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Fox, Cynthia, Geneviève Fortin, Véronique Martin and Louis Stelling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">2007. “L’Identité franco-américaine: tendances actuelles dans le sud de la Nouvelle-Angleterre.” </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Canadian Review of American Studies</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">. 37.1. 23-48.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Fox, Cynthia and Jane Smith. </span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">2005. La situation du français franco-américain: aspects linguistiques et sociolinguistiques. </span><span lang="DE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: DE;">In Albert Valdman, Julie Auger and Deborah Piston-Halton (Eds.) </span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Le français en Amérique du Nord. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. 117-142.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Roby, Yves. 2000. <i>Les Franco-Américains de la Nouvelle-Angleterre: Rêves et réalités</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Sillery: Septentrion. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Stelling, Louis. 2006. “‘Non-Standard’ Variation and the Language Classroom: Some Lessons from Franco-American French.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paper Presented at the <i>LLCP </i>conference. University at Albany, State University of New York</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">1. According to Brault (1979, 75) there are four principal elements which make Franco-Americans ethnically distinct from all other groups: French Canadian birth or ancestry; French as a mother tongue; Catholicism; and residence in New England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, language shift and cultural assimilation have created a current situation which complicates this definition (see Fox 2007; Fox et al. 2007; Fox and Smith 2005; Roby 2000).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this article, the term Franco-American refers to French Canadian immigrants and their descendants living in the Northeastern United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">2. Led by Cynthia Fox (University at Albany) and Jane Smith (University of Maine, Orono), <i>A Sociolinguistic Investigation of Franco-American French</i> was the first and only large scale investigation of French in New England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The study was funded by the National Science Foundation from 2001 to 2004.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sum total of 275 Franco-Americans were interviewed in the eight locations of Berlin, NH, Biddeford, Waterville, and Van Buren, ME, Bristol, CT, Woonsocket, RI, and Gardner and Southbridge, MA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interviews were guided by use of a questionnaire to gather information on topics such as the acquisition, use and transmission of French, and access to francophone culture and media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A translation task (English to French) was also used to elicit structures which are infrequent in conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For more information, see Fox and Smith (2005).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Louis E. Stelling teaches Languages at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Socrates’ Body and Soul</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Benjamin Hollows</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In <i>Phaedo</i>, Plato’s Socrates claims that death is nothing but the separation of the soul (self, mind) from the body and this is what he has spent his life trying to achieve, being a philosopher, as “…the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death” (1). Socrates asks why anyone would resent what one has spent one’s life trying to achieve.<b> </b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why would Socrates, or anyone, want to separate the soul from the body, especially during one’s life in a body?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">For the explanation of these questions, Socrates hints at teachings from the Greek mystery religions, from which Plato was likely an initiate, which assert that humans are in a “prison”, from which it takes much labor to liberate oneself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The physical body is the prison because it is trapping, limiting and contaminating the soul, the element within that, according to the mysteries, is closest to the divine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bodily concerns such as the desire for pleasure and the aversion to pain are what hinder one from accessing the soul to grasp the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, one must not be vulnerable to confusing bodily desires, and use pure reason alone (turning inward toward the soul) to access the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One can only attain true knowledge through the soul, as it is the soul which has access to the Forms, having existed prior to the body, and traveled through the realm of Forms.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">During one’s life, if one labors to disassociate and purify oneself from the body, one will receive true knowledge when one is liberated from the prison of the body. (2). If one has not spent one’s life purifying oneself through practicing virtue and uses the soul, instead, to serve the body and engages in constant intercourse with the body, the soul becomes polluted and impure, and will become a wandering, shadowy phantom until it is bound and imprisoned in another body, one step further away from truth and the divine (3). This concept is notably similar to Brahmanic philosophy, which may have an oblique connection to the Greek mysteries, in which the aim of life is to escape the samsaric cycle, and unite Atman with Brahman (pure consciousness with pure being).<b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Considering Socrates conceives the body in this sense as evil, and the cause for all suffering and the prohibition of happiness, one can understand why he argues for the separation of the soul from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The soul is perceived to be the source of truth and happiness, and through virtue, is not only separated from the body, but from “confusion, ignorance, fear, violent desires, and other human ills” (4).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socrates does not say to just practice philosophy, but to practice philosophy the “right way”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this he seems to mean the cultivation of virtue in the pursuit of truth<b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>In<b> </b><i>Meno</i>, Socrates and Meno agree that virtue is that which one uses to attain the beneficial, and I suspect the Socrates of these dialogues would argue that there is nothing more beneficial to a human than separation of the soul from the body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They also agree that virtue is wisdom, as one must use the means to achieve something in the right way, so to be benefited, because if one uses it in the wrong way, one can be harmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore virtue is the wisdom to use a means rightfully so to be beneficial, and attain the good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The soul must be directed by virtue to achieve what is most beneficial, ultimately, the separation from the body (5).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Though Socrates says one must practice the separation of the soul from the body during life, is this realistic or actually beneficial?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The soul, using the body as a vehicle, needs the body to purify itself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without being ensnared in a body, it would have no need for purification, and perhaps the only reason for entering the body is for it to labor to achieve liberation and be in the company of the divine, whether that is dwelling in Hades, uniting with the godhead or contemplation of the Forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The aim is to let the soul be the master, and to use the body in the right way so to benefit the soul and not harm it.<b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>The reason for separation is perhaps not to annihilate the body, which will inevitably occur upon death, but to develop the soul into the distinguished master, fit with the proper wisdom to rule the body during the body’s life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Even if the soul is not eternal and dissipates upon death, Socrates argues in <i>Phaedo</i> that to cultivate it with virtue is still more beneficial than not doing so. Bodily desires lead to dependency on external objects for happiness, and the absence of the object leads to pain and suffering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if one obtains the object, it will eventually disappear, as all in the physical world is fleeting, and this will lead to sorrow and despair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Attachment to external objects can also cloud judgment and cause one to engage in actions one may not do if that one was to turn inward toward reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pursuit of external objects may also become a distraction from more beneficial pursuits such as knowledge and the cultivation of intellectual capacity and virtues such as discipline, competency and selflessness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is possible that Plato assumed most humans were largely unaware of the benefits one achieves by turning away from the body toward the soul, and thought it necessary to talk of the soul as something with eternal benefits, for one to purify oneself with the cultivation of virtue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Despite his stoic or ascetic claims in these dialogues, it is evident here and elsewhere that the historical Socrates comfortably partook in bodily pleasures with moderation; as portrayed by Plato, he was also likely aware of the benefits of letting the soul be the master, rather than the body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even for Socrates, it would have taken much labor to cultivate his soul and keep his <i>daimonion</i> ever present.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">1. Plato, <i><u>Phaedo</u></i>, trans. G.M.A Grube. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), p.101-64a</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">2. Ibid p.104-67a</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">3. Plato, <i><u>Phaedo</u></i>, trans. G.M.A Grube. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), p.120-81d</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">4. Ibid. p.119-81a</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">5. Plato, <i><u>Meno</u></i>, trans. G.M.A Grube. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), p.80,81-87d-89a</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Benjamin Hollows is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The Way of Objectivity</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Daniel Sadlocha</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Immanuel Kant once posited that, due to the subjective nature of the mind, it is impossible to know anything in and of itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Due to our one point perspective, that is, the perspective of one coming from a particular point of view, humans are incapable of experiencing anything as objective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am purposing that this is untrue.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It is true that human experience is subjective in almost all aspects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We perceive colors, which are only fractions of what light itself truly is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We see the colors that are not absorbed by what we are looking at with our eyes, and our eyes interpret what they see as the reflection of what is not absorbed, we see this as color.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hear sounds, but, as sounds are wavelengths contained within pressure, temperature, space, etc., we can only hear a sound as an individual experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are experiences that we name as a dog barking, or a train going by and depend on our placement near the origin of the sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We cannot hear the wavelength in full, because our eardrums are not equipped for such a task.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are a method of filtering the wavelength into a perceivable interpretation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same thing could be said for touch, as we individually interpret electrical signals cascading through our nervous system, or through taste or smell, which sends similar electrical and chemical signals to our brain to identify sweet or bitter, pleasant or foul.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Within the bounds of our senses, I must agree, the absolute, the thing in-and-of itself cannot be objectively experienced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is because as long as we identify with our senses, as long as we internalize them and perceive them and what they are experiencing, we create an individual experience, i.e. the smell of an apple, the feel of a chalkboard.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Sense, itself, however, is real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If one retracts from the sensual object itself and experiences smelling, rather than smelling an apple, one interacts with a very real experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same can be said for taste.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a difference between eating a meal in haste to get to your next class, and closing your eyes, tuning out your ears, and opening yourself up to the full experience of what is in your mouth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the experience of the sense itself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This experience of the fullness of one’s senses is the closest subjectivity can come to objectivity and still have the experience be able to be transmitted through words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One exclaims “I taste,” or “I see,” and even here we find that meaning is lacking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The subjective mind requires attachment in order to communicate the essence of experience, which is why the objective can never be written in words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, the listening wishes to hear “I taste a peach,” or “I see a bear.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peeling the subjective away further, releasing the requirement for explanation, we can go beyond the sensual experience, thus stripping away the ‘taste’ or the ‘seeing’ and find ourselves left with the ‘I’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The encompassing “I am” that the mind postulates to itself in order to exist and continue existing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the “I” is not objective, because it, in its very essence, describes subjectivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is “I” and not “You.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, it is still subjective.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Thus, it is only in stripping away the “I”, in releasing that final point of subjectivity, that one can experience the objective, the thing-in-and-of-itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This experience is indescribable because it lacks the grounding of the “I” and is not transmittable to the “You.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, I purpose that it is possible to experience the objective, but “I” or “You” cannot experience it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can only be experienced, and in no way that can be communicated directly through words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This idea creates a feeling of lack and it is thusly that philosophers continue the never-ending search for the communication and experience of this idea.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Daniel Sadlocha is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">A Cup of Coffee Refused at Peter’s Place</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Derek Anderson</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Every Saturday I walk into Peter’s Place, a small coffee shop with barely any customers after 6AM, and none on the weekends, whistling a brisk tune with my hands in my jeans and a sincere appreciation for fresh air, and every weekend I have the same conversation with Peter as he rubs the counters clean.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Out,” he says quietly, neither angry nor impatient, just matter-of-fact. “I don’t serve your kind here.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A classic line, one that’s never fazed me much. You see, about a year ago, after having come to Peter’s Place for a few months, I brought my boyfriend in for a cup of coffee. We were, in the manner that I am now accustomed to, asked quietly by Peter to leave. This kind of treatment was not particularly shocking to me, but personally, until that day, I was under the impression that I participated in a generation about to be released from homophobia. I suppose I was idealistic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But since then, I’ve been curious. I walk into Peter’s Place each Saturday, wondering if he’ll change his mind, but he never does. So today, my curiosity gets the better of me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“A question, before I go,” I say, with the same calmness he maintains, but with an added smile—I’m not in the mood to be emotionally disrupted today, though believe me, on some days I’d be screaming “Bigot!” at him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Fine,” he says, wiping the counter and looking up at me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why won’t you serve me a coffee?” I ask.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Irrelevant. It’s my choice, it’s my establishment, and I’m asking you to leave.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Okay. I’ll ignore for the purpose of this conversation that the Civil Rights Act exists, because that’s another discussion. I’ll even sidestep inquiry about your reasoning. Instead, I want to know why you feel it’s your right to refuse me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why wouldn’t it be?” he says, with dispassionate patience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’d prefer to know why you think it is.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well to me it seems perfectly obvious. I don’t believe the government, the town or anyone else has a right to tell me who I can and cannot serve coffee to. However just or unjust my reasons may be, I think it’s my right, in owning this place, to choose who I can turn away.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So inherent in our rights, then,” I say, “is the ability to choose unjustly.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not unjust. Inherent in our rights is choosing freely between options. My option is whether or not to serve customers. No one has a stake in that decision but me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It sounds fair,” I say. “But there’s something intuitively askew… Perhaps it’s the idea that freedom, here, seems to entail the right to do wrong.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I believe it does.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Let me try an experiment, then,” I say.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He’s rubbing a mug clean, and frowns at me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’ll try to make it quick,” I say. “But perhaps a coffee while I wait?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>His frown persists. I was joking.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Okay,” I say. “Imagine we are both free from the kind of government American society, or any other society, for that matter, entails. There are no laws—we are acting on moral reasoning alone.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We’d all kill each other.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Possibly, yes. Nice to know you’ve ample faith in humanity, though,” I smile. “But imagine a community. A small one, to simplify things. A small town, perhaps, governed by no larger authority.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Alright.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Okay, now I’m going to start heavy, so that we can examine extreme circumstances, and move our way backwards to something that resembles our predicament. Don’t think I’m trying to caricature your position.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Fine.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“One day a murder is occurring in the town square. You happen to be walking by at the time—the assailant is about to stab the victim. What do you do?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Try and save the person, as long as I can avoid getting murdered.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“A fine answer,” I say. “I think I’d choose the same. In that situation, why would you act as you chose?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It’s my obligation. No one should be murdered.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We have a right to be alive.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Precisely.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“A right that overrules our right to choose whether or not to murder.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I know what you’re doing here. You can’t foist a poor comparison on me. These situations are not the same.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I am well aware. I told you, we’re starting big.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He doesn’t say anything, just pulls more mugs from beneath the counter and cleans them. But he listens.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Now, imagine another set of situations—in the first, a person is being physically assaulted, in the second, a person is being verbally harassed, and in both cases, the person is not well-liked among the town, for reasons of a personal matter, not one of negative action committed by the person.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No one deserves to be assaulted.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Do you step in?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m not certain it’s my responsibility. People need to settle things on their own.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Even through violence?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Are you expecting me to break up every fight in town?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No. But you think they’re wrong, right?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yes. Don’t you?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yes.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So are you going to break up every fight you see, on the grounds that no one should be physically assaulted?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I should,” I say. “But I don’t know if I would. I don’t know if I have the courage for that.” There’s no point in lying here. “I don’t know if I could walk up to everyone and tell them not to fight. I don’t even know what I’d say if both parties were of the opinion that they wanted to be engaged in that fight.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Exactly. Keep your nose out.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So do we give everyone the right to hurt each other?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“If the other guy doesn’t care, what right is it of yours?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Okay,” I say. “A fair point. But I’m paying attention to that line. Let’s move on to the other scenario.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“The verbal assault? No. Free speech is the greatest thing about this country.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Agreed. But let’s say the stuff being said relates directly to this person’s standing in the town—like I said, they’ve done nothing wrong to any of their aggressors, and yet still face verbal abuse throughout the day, on the grounds of prejudice. What do you do?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Nothing. What are you suggesting, Mr. P.C., that we go around censoring ourselves?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Absolutely not.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You’re not convincing me. We have a right to say whatever we want, to whomever we want, whenever we want. You want to take that away?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s what I’m asking you.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Then my answer is no. That right should not be taken away.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And in the situation we discussed?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Look, if you want me to defend people like that, I’m not going to. Sure, I’ll defend with every fiber in me that they have the right to yell whatever they want at whoever they want, but I’m not going to sink into the portrait you’re painting right now and say that I support their mindset. Everyone should keep to themselves. No one needs that kind of judgment.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Particularly not for being the way they are, having done nothing wrong.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He stares at me and stops cleaning the mug for a second. I entertain a moment of hope, but quickly realize I’m too eager.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No one deserves to be shut up,” he says. “Never leads to anything good.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Okay,” I say. “So I’m going to make an assumption here, that of the three situations we discussed—firstly murder, then physical harm, then free speech, you’d rank our situation in the third category.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Absolutely.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“In the third example, the term “free speech” is named for a peculiar reason, right? What it actually entails, and what you yourself pointed out, is that we are free to choose poorly, such as in the example of the person being harassed.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yes. We shouldn’t be censored according to people’s dispositions or idiosyncrasies. A man’s got freedom only if he can make a choice.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But in the first case, you didn’t feel it was the murderer’s right to take a life.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Of course. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Least of all me. And in the second case, you didn’t feel like it was the right of the abuser to abuse if the other person didn’t want to be abused.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Correct. We all deserve protection.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You see, here,” I say, hoping I’ve explained myself. “is where the correlation between these examples and our dilemma gets muddy for me. Because I want to know what falls between the area of person who doesn’t want to be abused and free speech. I want to know the moral difference that allots two different reactions to these situations.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He thinks about it for awhile, more patient than I might have been in his shoes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I suppose it’s whether or not someone’s being hurt, or merely shortchanged.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You mean just physical hurt?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not necessarily. But there’s a line.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Certainly.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Stretch the line too far and no one can do anything. I don’t want to live in a society where I can’t open my mouth or move for fear of offending someone. It’s my right to be happy.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I can’t agree more. What we’re miring is: at what point do we retract what freedoms we have out of respect for others? Is it just with physical harm?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m not sure,” he says. “Explain.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well that’s the basis of morality, right? Retracting our freedom of choice when it harms others. Here we’re talking about your right not to give me a cup of coffee. Which is not like refusing me bread when I am starving, nor is it yelling out slurs while you serve me the coffee. It’s deciding not to serve me based on a genetic disposition I am not in control of. I hope we needn’t debate that one.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No. I’m not serving you for that reason.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Good. Well, not good, but now I can continue. What I’m saying is that you have chosen, based on factors irrelative to any wrongs I may have committed you, not to serve me coffee, and feel it your moral right to do so.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I am unchanged. Yes. You don’t need coffee. If you were starving I’d give you food so you wouldn’t die, but since you seem just fine, I have the right to ignore you.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And a fine job you’re doing at it,” I smirk, hoping not to push my luck. “I’m interested now, though—so it’s my right not to starve. Is it society’s right to shun me?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What do you mean?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I mean the society we’re considering, save one grocery store, refuses to serve me. Even at their quietest, I am shunned. I don’t have the same rights as everyone else—to go where I please, be served at stores, or participate in society.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You’re getting murky now.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I have to,” I say. “I think <i>our</i> situation is morally murky. When you move away from easy things like death, everything gets that way.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well, I don’t know if it’s right for you to be shunned like that,” he says. “After all, a society’s supposed to offer the same benefits to everyone. Not that I support anything like affirmative action,” he says. “Fairness includes not paying attention to a minority, for good or bad.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I feel as if it’s ironic for you to say that.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not really.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well, you mentioned fairness. That everyone should get similar opportunities.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“To an extent. Fair to exactly the place you keep mentioning—until it steps on other people’s toes.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So whose toes are getting stepped on in our situation?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yours,” he says, unabashedly. “But the same as the person getting hollered at. In defense of a liberty.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m confused. You didn’t agree with my being shunned.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He quiets. Though I can hear his gears turning, I’m not satisfied with my own argument, but I’m not sure if I can be.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What’s freedom?” I ask. “Is it just the right to choose wrong?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“There’s not just right and wrong,” he says. “Freedom is having choices.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But morality’s weird, right? It limits those choices.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I don’t know if that’s weird.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maybe it’s just me. But when I hear freedom, I think of the right to do what I want. When I’m fully free, I can do anything I want—even kill someone. But somehow that doesn’t feel like real freedom, right? Am I off?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maybe.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It feels like that’s how freedom gets defined. Often. Like when it’s completely unharnessed, you are unhindered by law and ethics. Then, when we mention the extent of what we’re then able to do, it doesn’t feel like that’s included in freedom, because of morality.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I guess it can feel that way. Doesn’t have to.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Even if it’s just me. It feels like freedom, the right to choose, goes hand in hand with morality—and if we’re patrons of morality, there are a bunch of things we shouldn’t choose.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“The ability to choose them makes us free.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Does it?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He cleans his mug. I’m not sure either, so I keep talking.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“See, the reasons I’ve run through all these things is that morality is not about freedom. When employed, it debilitates freedom. When phrased in that manner, everyone complains about being restricted. Why are we so obsessed with the ability to choose?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Otherwise we wouldn’t be free at all. Morality would have no bearing.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“An excellent point,” I say, growing quiet, introspective. “Moral reasoning, then, depends on having a wrong choice that we do not choose. And there are not always merely right or wrong choices, as easy as not murdering someone or not taking away free speech.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You haven’t convinced me it’s not my right not to serve you coffee,” he says.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I know,” I say. “But here’s what I’m driving at. Sure, it’s your right to refuse me coffee. I’m not going to die without it, I’m not even going to be harmed without it. In fact, since society’s a lot better these days for some groups, even though it persists and may persist forever in shunning others, I know I can just get a coffee somewhere else.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Exactly.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But even though it’s not your absolute moral duty to treat me the same as your other customers—is it freedom that gives you the right not to serve me, or freedom that gives you an excuse not to do so?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He puts down the mug and looks at me for only a few seconds.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What’s the difference?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I smile. “I don’t know if there is one.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I really don’t. I’m not being rhetorical—it doesn’t even feel like a good epiphany at the time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I say, “I guess all I’ve left to say is this—people have spent a very long time without acceptance, without open minds, and without compassion because they had the right to do so.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Is that wrong?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I don’t think so,” I say. “How else can you learn, right? And maybe it’s just my position, being momentarily disenfranchised on those grounds,” I say, getting up and taking a dollar and a dime, the cost of a coffee from my pocket, and placing it on the table. “But if it were me, I’d lean toward compassion and spend a little less time worrying whether or not it’s my right not to do so.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I didn’t give you a coffee,” he says, pushing the money back at me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s for yours,” I say, and leave Peter’s Place satisfied.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Derek Anderson is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-44836644954868206512012-06-08T17:50:00.002-04:002012-06-08T17:30:56.004-04:00Volume 16.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><style>
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<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 36pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Review</span><span style="color: white; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 16 • Number 1 </span></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">May, 2008</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew R. Silliman </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">WHAT MAKES HONORS STUDENTS HONORABLE?<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Gerol Petruzella</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">YOU WANT ME TO <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">WHAT?</i> RESEARCH, GRADUATE SCHOOL, AND A REAL LIFE<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Jessica Dennis</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">HUME ON MIRACLES<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Carolyn Cook</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A BABOON’S ROLE IN THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><h3 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">What Makes Honors Students Honorable?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></h3><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew R. Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Decent grades qualify any student to join the honors program, but what does it take to become an honors student in a deeper sense, worthy of some particular academic honor beyond receiving high grades? I recently asked this question of an honors seminar; I offer this distillation of our collective thoughts for further discussion, and as a challenge to those who see themselves as or hope someday to be honors students at MCLA. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Accomplished honors students are:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Fearlessly communicative</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">. They express themselves willingly, listen carefully to what others have to say, and listen especially for reasons to think that their views may be partial or wrong. This quality combines intellectual honesty and courage with an active generosity of attention toward others and curiosity about the world.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Active readers </span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">of books, other media, other people, and the world. Honors students are interested in many things -- big questions, different walks of life, new experiences, new knowledge. They appreciate the process of learning itself, not just its products or rewards, and take it beyond the classroom, accepting every possible invitation to hear speakers, attend performances and films, go on hikes, and participate in a wide array of educational experiences.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Thoughtful persons.</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> Not only are they dependable students, friends, and colleagues who keep their commitments, but honors students strive for a deeper integrity between what they think and say, how they feel, and how they act. Their commitment to the principles in this list, for example, is not merely rhetorical, but steadfast and genuine.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Critical thinkers</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">. Honors students avoid the temptation of being overly critical (in the pejorative sense); instead, they are curious and respectful toward all sources of knowledge. At the same time, they accept no important claim to know uncritically or on mere authority, but seek both corroborative evidence for and respectful challenges to any proposition, including their own most cherished opinions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Creative risk-takers</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">. More likely to take a course because it sounds fascinating or challenging than because it fulfills a requirement, honors students reach beyond their comfort zones and take risks for the sake of learning. They seek a balance between academic and nonacademic pursuits, often supplementing their studies with the creative arts, physical activities, and other productive, fulfilling social activities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Committed writers</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">. Inclined to process and articulate what they experience and learn, accomplished honors students are likely to write regularly for themselves (and to their friends and family) as well as for their classes, as an active means of consolidating and advancing the learning process. In formal writing contexts, they spend more time researching, organizing, and editing than simply drafting.</span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">Members of a learned community</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">. Honors students seek to belong to a socially engaged, politically aware (and tolerant), and expansively inclusive group of intellectuals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew R. Silliman teaches Philosophy and Co-Directs the Honors Program at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">You Want Me to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What?</i> Research, Graduate School, and a Real Life</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gerol Petruzella</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(The following is the text of the author’s keynote address to the sixth annual undergraduate research conference at MCLA)</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The title of these remarks:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You Want Me to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What?</i>” was my rhetorical response the first time someone suggested that I consider doing graduate research. It was also my response at various points <i>during</i> my graduate life, as I came upon new and surprising aspects of what I’d gotten myself into. I make this question the focus of my remarks today because I’m trying to do two distinct things in the present essay, and this question covers them both. First, to give some anecdotal evidence about the experience of graduate research and its impact; and second, to talk about my own research, and how it has developed from my training in graduate school. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I’m a product of public education. After graduating from the Pittsfield Public School system, I attended Berkshire Community College for two years, then transferred to MCLA in 1999 as a junior. My interest was in ancient languages, and so I became a Philosophy major, focusing on ancient Greek philosophy. Thanks to the reciprocal compact among Berkshire County’s institutions of higher education, I was able to take two semesters of ancient Greek at Williams my senior year. As a senior, I participated in the Philosophy Department’s Mini-Conference with no small degree of eager trepidation. Throughout my undergraduate years, I had never really given much thought to what would come <i>after </i>graduation. But by the end of my first year here, I’d begun to realize that I wasn’t quite ready to leave the academic world behind. A large part of this realization was simply that I saw how much more there was to learn in my fields of interest. I felt as though I had seen a banquet spread out in front of me, but had only just gotten through the salad course! As I saw graduation approaching, I realized that my undergraduate work had prepared me in many ways for the rest of my life; but one thing for which it had utterly failed to prepare me – was leaving it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">With advice from professors, friends and family, I decided to enter a Ph.D. program in philosophy. This decision <i>felt </i>good. I had a picture in my mind of what grad school would be like, and it was exactly where I saw myself: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in classes with other people who cared as much as I did about the arcana of ancient Greek philosophy and language, writing papers, debating, attending lectures by world-famous scholars. But, after all, I was a philosopher (or at least a student of philosophy), and simply <i>feeling </i>good wasn’t sufficient reason to justify such a monumental decision. Did it make sense? Was it worth it – the expense, the effort, the time? What did I hope to achieve? Among all the bits and pieces of information I’d collected about grad school, a common thread was the <i>intensity </i>of study. Grad school is a sort of apprenticeship: you are not simply ‘the student’, learning from ‘the professor’. You are a professional-in-training, whether your field is scientific, academic, or business-related; and you are evaluated more on the original applications of your knowledge than on the accumulation of that knowledge. In the summer after I graduated from MCLA, I wondered at the wisdom of organizing the next several years of my life around an expensive apprenticeship, at the end of which I would be an expert in … what, exactly? Aristotle, Plutarch, Alexander of Aphrodisias, perhaps Xenophon’s <i>Memorabilia</i>…? When so many of my peers were entering careers, college education in hand, at the age of 21, was I closing myself off from the ‘real world’, simply for the self-indulgent pleasure of study? As I faced the impending prospect of graduate study, that small cynical part of my mind kept asking, “You want me to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i>?” And I found I didn’t have an easy answer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I entered the Ph.D. program at the University at Buffalo in September 2001. I didn’t know it, but I was about to learn my first lesson in balancing graduate work with my life in the world. On Tuesday September 11, my seminar in Aristotle had met only once so far, but we were about 50 pages into the <i>Nicomachean Ethics</i>, and already planning our thesis topics. We met in the grad student lounge before class to hang out and ‘talk shop’. Then Judy, our department secretary, told us to turn on the television. Crowding around the 13-inch black-and-white screen, we saw the fall of the Twin Towers, and felt the boundaries of our world suddenly expand far, far beyond the walls of our seminar room. In the face of such a world-changing tragedy, what in the world was the relevance of what I was doing here? Yet in the weeks and months that followed, I saw first-hand how our discipline, so often criticized for ‘ivory tower’ disconnectedness, was suddenly at the forefront of the most relevant issues and events in our world. As world leaders debated the ethics of retaliation, of violence and non-violence, of pre-emptive war, policy makers and the public turned to philosophers for clarification, explanation, even direction. My epistemology professor had come to Buffalo from West Point Academy; he offered presentations to the university community on pre-emptive war and torture. Another department member, who taught courses in ontology and Husserl, won a multi-million-dollar grant doing research for the European Union on data mining, and was invited to speak on the origins of terrorism to government panels in Paris, Kyoto, and Leipzig, Germany. These were my mentors, my colleagues. I worked with them on a daily basis. We ate General Tso’s chicken together at the Chinese restaurant down the road from campus. And here they were, directly involved with perhaps <i>the</i> defining world events of a generation. And they were not setting aside their ‘academic’ work to address contemporary events: they were <i>doing philosophy</i>, using precisely the knowledge and skills of their research and teaching to be relevant and effective participants in the ‘real world’.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And so eventually I came to refine further my understanding of the relevance of graduate study to my life. I realized that I had to <i>make something </i>of my studies. If I waited for a seminar or thesis topic to appear that somehow <i>made</i> ancient philosophy relevant to my present-day life and society, I would be waiting, while others were doing. This was a key realization for me, which came after I had taken all my required courses, and was ready to write my topic proposal – the 50-page document outlining the dissertation I eventually hoped to write. I was enthusiastic! I had my new-found insight! I spent a semester writing it, and gave it to my advisor for approval.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">He rejected it. He told me not simply to re-write it, but to re-focus my whole project.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">You want me to <i>what?</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I did it, of course, after the requisite couple of weeks of despair. And, by the way, if there’s anything useful I can tell you about research, graduate-level or otherwise, it is this: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>do not, under any circumstances, measure the value of your work by the success or failure of any single thesis or project. In grad school, as in life, <i>everyone</i> gets intimately acquainted with failure. Being successful in research <i>must </i>include the ability to deal with these situations effectively. Another very common frustration in grad school: coming up with a fantastic, revolutionary, ground-breaking idea for a paper…only to find out, as you begin researching the literature, that this very same fantastic, revolutionary, ground-breaking idea was proposed fifteen years ago by one of the leading experts in your field. What defines success in situations like these? I see three distinct components. First, being flexible: adapting the direction of your research to new information (even when that information is negative). Next, being self-confident: realizing that the rejection of your proposal is not a comment on your abilities, or your innate suitability for graduate work. Last, being sneaky: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that is, finding ways to continue to pursue your own research program, even while adapting your work to your advisor’s advice and direction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Let me illustrate these three points in my own experience. First, some background about my research. One of my primary areas of interest is a particular type of ethical thought common to most ancient philosophers, called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eudaimonistic ethics</i>. In modern discussions about morality, we tend to assume that what is ‘right’ is an essentially different sort of thing than what is ‘useful’ or ‘beneficial’. This distinction is where so many of our moral debates arise: embryonic stem cell research is considered to be (at least potentially) an extremely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">useful </i>type of research; but someone can admit that, and still call it morally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wrong. </i>In contrast to such a stark division, philosophers like Aristotle start with the premise that ‘morally right’ and ‘beneficial’ are inter-related – rather than being separate or conflicting. In my original topic proposal paper, I was arguing that a particularly important part of Aristotle’s ethical writing seemed incoherent to modern scholars due to a lack of clarity in translating a certain class of words from ancient Greek to the modern languages. Aristotle generally argues that leading an ethical life is possible no matter what your life circumstances – it’s within the power of absolutely anyone at any time. (So there are no excuses.) However, there are also central passages that indicate that he considers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">material prosperity</i> to be essential for true success in life. Now, the Greek term that translates both ‘ethical life’ and ‘successful life’ is <i>eudaimonia</i>, a word that includes many shades of meaning, and is notoriously opaque to translators. And of course, having an accurate and precise meaning for a crucial term in an argument is a <i>prerequisite</i> for any meaningful discourse, philosophical or not. In my paper, I proposed a course of research that would include linguistic analysis of this Greek word-group, not just in Aristotle’s writings, but in other ancient Greek texts as well, from the earliest texts to the late Hellenistic period. I had already read enough to suppose that, given the way the Greeks actually used these words, the supposed incoherence in Aristotle’s work arose from the translation, and didn’t represent a problem in the philosophy itself. I had compiled a bibliography that would be the basis of my research; had a clear and well-articulated thesis; and a definite program of research. My preliminary research was confirming my thesis. At this point you may be wondering: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>so why was my proposal rejected? Well, remember what I said earlier about finding one’s idea has already been proposed by someone else? In my case, my idea had been proposed in the 1990s by a pre-eminent ancient philosopher. She had suggested that the incoherence in Aristotle might be due to the translation of this term. Interestingly enough, she then proceeded to reject this explanation on other grounds. My advisor suggested that, since the idea had not only been proposed already, but was then proven to be false as well, it wasn’t exactly the best choice for my dissertation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And so I learned the first necessary part of graduate research – to be flexible. In consultation with my advisor, I broadened my research program to include, not only Aristotle, but Socrates, Plato, and the Stoic philosophers. Instead of a narrow focus on a particular word-group, my revised project dealt with the concept of ‘external goods’: physical and mental health, material prosperity, social and family stability, and how all these factors influence the Greeks’, and our own, ideas of ethical living. I adapted my research goals to fit the current state of scholarship in the field.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When it comes to the second aspect of success I mentioned earlier – self-confidence – I have to admit that I failed miserably. Through the entire latter half of my time in grad school, I was wracked with self-doubt. I felt like a fraud – my work was derivative and unoriginal, and the department was continuing to tolerate my presence only because of the tuition I was paying. I had invested too much of myself in my original thesis, and I crumpled when it was rejected. It was a long, difficult process for me to realize that the rejection of my proposal was not a comment on my abilities, or my suitability for graduate work.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As for being sneaky: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I accepted that my dissertation work could not have the focus I had originally hoped it would. But I remained unconvinced that my original thesis wasn’t viable. And I wanted to pursue my original line of research in some capacity, to satisfy my own curiosity about it. And so, as I worked on my new project for my dissertation over the next three years, I also pursued my <i>eudaimonia </i>research on the side. And in 2005, I turned that rejected 50-page proposal into a Master’s Thesis for my M.A. in the Classics department. The next year I had a paper based on this research accepted for presentation at an international conference.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">So now, here I am. I’ve made it through graduate school, and my junk mail now comes addressed to “<i>Doctor</i> Gary Petrozulla.” What have I gained? In a very interesting way, my ‘official’ studies have dovetailed with the knowledge I’ve gained from my life experiences. I no longer doubt the value of my graduate school training, or its relevance, even for a field of study like ancient Greek philosophy. Today I’m continuing my research into both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eudaimonia </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">and external goods; and in doing so, I’m finding fascinating areas of overlap with research being conducted in other fields, for example, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and other psychologists studying the experience of optimal mental states. I’ve also expanded my linguistic research, studying connections and correlations in philosophical terminology between ancient Greek and Sanskrit texts. And I’m finding more and more opportunities to see the ideas I read about in my research in practice. What is <i>eudaimonia</i> – a successful life, a flourishing life? I try to answer that question in what I write; but also in how I live. Higher education is a great place to gain, not only knowledge, but the wisdom to use your knowledge.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">My studies within ancient philosophy have focused on what thinkers in the founding period of Western thought considered to be the requirements for leading a flourishing life. To a great extent, those ideals we value in our contemporary understanding of society rely on premises shared with Plato, Aristotle and their successors. Inasmuch as a person’s happiness is influenced by the society he inhabits, it is one of my primary research interests to understand this connection. And since ethics is the philosophic discipline concerned not only with the life of the mind, but also with active engagement in life in society, there is no topic more characteristic of, nor essential to, my chosen field than this.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">When I was first confronted with the suggestion to pursue graduate-level research, my response was “You want me to <i>what</i>?” For what should I commit yet another large chunk of my life to study? My own answer came through <i>both</i> my studies <i>and</i> my experiences. As I close, let me ask you this: Do you see your work here today, your research in general, as a real part of your life, the things you care about? Or is it something separate, something disconnected, that you’ll quickly leave behind once you’ve got the grade, or fulfilled the requirement, or graduated? I hope it’s the former option. Because as far as I can tell, p</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">erhaps the most important aspect of the liberal arts tradition is that its goal is the complete development of a human life through education. To quote one early 20<sup>th</sup>-century educator, “The liberal arts…teach one how to live; they train the faculties and bring them to perfection; they enable a person to rise above his material environment to live an intellectual, a rational, and therefore a free life in gaining truth.” <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Sounds like philosophy to me!</span></span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gerol Petruzella is an MCLA Philosophy Department alumnus, philosophy scholar, and teacher.</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Hume on Miracles</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jessica Dennis</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">One chapter of David Hume’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding</i> is devoted to refuting the notion of miracles. The chapter “Of Miracles” is interesting because much of Hume’s argument against miracles does not agree with his other arguments about the nature of human knowledge. The contradiction seems to discredit Hume and his ideas. However, closer examination of Hume as a skeptic and an author reveals that “Of Miracles” is not as far out of line with the rest of his thinking as one might assume at first glance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enquiry</i>, Hume makes the argument that in their everyday lives, people are guided by custom, not by reason. He asserts that people experience connections between objects and/or events. With enough exposure to the same event, people come to expect that connection by custom. For example, the first time a person encounters a flame he also notices that the fire gives off heat. The same person will experience that connection many times over the course of his life, and he will expect that connection to continue based on custom. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Custom relies on the assumption that there is continuity between the past and the present. People make inferences based on their past experiences, such as: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if I light a match, the flame will give off heat. These inferences are not always epistemically strong, but they are very often useful in daily life. By making inferences based on past experience and observations, people create a guide by which they can make decisions and act in the real world. Inferences allow us to live our lives guided by custom.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the chapter “Of Miracles” Hume paints a somewhat contrary picture of human knowledge and reason. He defines a miracle as anything that goes against the laws of nature. In order for us to consider something a miracle, there must be a uniformity of experience contrary to that miraculous event. According to Hume, a miracle can only become credible if its falsification is more astounding than the miracle itself. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Hume presents four reasons why there is a lack of evidence for miracles. The first is that there is a lack of enough trustworthy people to provide testimony for the miracle in question. The second reason is that when people encounter the unknown they tend to relate it to the known. In human thought what is known or usual also seems to be the most plausible. The third reason against evidence for miracles is that claims about miracles often originate among the uneducated or the sheltered. The final reason is that all miracles that have been claimed in the past have experienced some form of opposition. </span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The reasoning in “Of Miracles” does not fit with the rest of Hume’s work. In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enquiry</i> Hume argues that the inner workings of the universe are hidden from human view. We have limited knowledge about all of the factors that influence an event; this means that we can never know the true probability of an event occurring. Hume insists that we must strive to see the probability of even the most unusual event. Of course, this also applies to the probability of a miraculous event occurring.</span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The question then remains, why would Hume include “Of Miracles” if it is so inconsistent with his other written work? I believe the answer resides in his insistence that no good can come from excessive skepticism. He believes that some skeptical thought would rid us of prejudices and preformed notions about the world, but that in order to function in day-to-day life we must be moderate in our skeptical thought. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In addition, at the end of the chapter, Hume concedes that there may be miracles. He objects to the lack of proof that is offered for historical miracles, and he chafes at the idea of those miracles being used as the foundation for major world religions. If a person believes in something without applying any reason, she is left with only her faith. That faith is leading her to believe in something that is contrary to all of her life experiences, and that is something that Hume finds uncomfortable. </span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Instead, Hume encourages his readers to use skepticism as a tool for enlightenment. He says that as people we must acknowledge our limitations. However, those limitations should not stop us from using our power of observation to come as close to the truth as possible. Hume concedes that miracles are (barely) possible, but that does not mean that we should believe everything we hear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jessica Dennis is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Baboon’s Role in the Evolution of Language</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Carolyn Cook</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Many people find it difficult to understand how humans acquired their remarkable sophistication of language, given that our closest evolutionary cousins are comparatively inarticulate and non-linguistic. However, the social studies of baboons have created a hypothesis that baboon life was the precursor for human cognition. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Humans routinely classify others according to both their individual attributes, such as social status or wealth, and membership in higher order groups, such as families or castes. They also recognize that people’s individual attributes may be influenced and regulated by their group affiliations. The social ordering for baboons is similar. Baboons recognize that a dominance hierarchy can be subdivided into family groups. They respond more strongly to call sequences mimicking dominance-rank reversals between families than within families, indicating that they classify others simultaneously according to both individual rank and kinship. The selective pressures imposed by complex societies may have favored cognitive skills that constitute an evolutionary precursor to some components of human cognition.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> (Bergman, et al.)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Baboons are Old World monkeys who shared a common ancestor with today’s humans about 36 million years ago. Their social knowledge now shares several properties with human language. Representational knowledge is confirmed when a baboon hears a vocalization. It acquires specific information about an interaction between specific individuals. They recognize that vocalizations follow certain rules of directionality (for example, screams are only given by subordinates to dominants). When two baboons produce a sequence of calls, they are interpreted by listeners in a manner that resembles the way we interpret sentences, both in the information acquired and in the manner of its construction. Baboons acquire propositional information by combining their knowledge of call types, callers, and the callers' places in a social network, and by assuming a causal relation between one animal's vocalizations and another's.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> (Worden; Seyfarth, et al.)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Like baboons, our ancestors evidently lived in groups with intricate networks of relationships that were simultaneously competitive and cooperative. Before the emergence of language, hominids assigned meaning to other individuals' calls and extracted rule-governed, propositional information from them. Human language may have evolved from such primitive communication, then, under highly selective pressure to communicate their thoughts.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> (Hespos, et al)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">References</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Bergman, T.J., Beehner, J.C., Cheney, D.L. & Seyfarth, R.M. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Science</i> 302, 1234-1236 (2003). </span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">R. Worden, The evolution of language from social intelligence. In: J.R. Hurford <i>et al.</i>, Editors, <i>Approaches to the Evolution of Language</i>, Cambridge University Press (1998), pp. 148–168.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">R.M. Seyfarth and D.L. Cheney, The structure of social knowledge in monkeys. In: F. de Waal and P. Tyack, Editors, <i>Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and Individualized Societies</i>, Harvard University Press (2003), pp. 207–229.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">S.J. Hespos and E. Spelke, Conceptual precursors to language, <i>Nature</i> <strong><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">430</span></strong> (2004), pp. 453–456).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Carolyn Cook is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-30101974181069652092012-06-08T15:52:00.001-04:002012-06-08T17:31:41.844-04:00Volume 15.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 36pt;"> THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt;"> </span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 15 • Number 1 </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">December, 2007</span></div><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span></span></u></b><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Inside this Issue: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Paul Nnodim</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">HUSSERL AND HEIDEGGER ON THE MEANING OF PHENOMENOLOGY </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Alex Elvin</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">LEO TOLSTOY</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Recollection is Inherent in Artistic Communication </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">SOCRATIC METHOD</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Seth Kershner</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">QUALIFYING THE ONE IN PLOTINUS</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Some Preliminary Remarks </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Jennifer Thomas</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">DEFENDING RELIGION TO NIETZCHE</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Greg Tessier</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">INVISIBLE ARMOR</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">A Dialogue with Diogenes the Cynic </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Kevin Pink</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">OBJECTION, YOUR HONOR </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Husserl and Heidegger on the Meaning of Phenomenology</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Paul Nnodim</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The two German philosophers Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) count among the most prominent contemporary western philosophers. Heidegger became world famous through his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sein und Zeit </i>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being and Time</i>), which he hastily published in 1927 with the support of his philosophical mentor Edmund Husserl. Although he dedicated the entire book to Husserl, his personal relationship and philosophical allegiance to Husserl deteriorated under the influence of Nazism. Husserl, who is considered the father of phenomenology, would later view <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being and Time</i> as a “genial unscientific philosophy” and betrayal of phenomenology by his most trusted pupil. Husserl retired as chair of philosophy at the University of Freiburg in 1928, handing over the chair’s position to Heidegger. In 1933, Heidegger became rector of the University of Freiburg and, to the dismay of some German intellectuals of the time (among them Karl Jaspers and Hans Georg Gadamer), officially joined the Nazi party. Three years later, the Nazi withdrew Husserl’s teaching license because of his Jewish background. Disappointed by his most ardent disciple, Husserl died in 1938. Herman Leo Van Breda (1911-1974), a Belgian priest, saved about 40,000 pages of Husserl’s unpublished, stenographic manuscripts from destruction in the hands of the Nazis. These manuscripts are now available at the Husserl archive of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">At the end of the Second World War, Heidegger’s reputation as a great philosopher began to fade under the de-Nazification process, until his former student and secret lover – Hanna Arendt – launched Heideggerianism into the mainstream American philosophical tradition. From across the Atlantic, continental Europe re-discovered her lost icon. Philosophers of both the continental and analytic traditions have mixed feelings about Heidegger’s philosophy. It is a philosophy coded in strange, but innovative language. While some celebrate this philosophy, others revile it as unnecessarily complicated, impenetrable, and best left to the mercy of Ockham’s razor.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Phenomenology as a Science</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophy as a Rigorous Science </i>(1910), Husserl presents a detailed explanation of what phenomenology is all about. Phenomenology is the study of whatever is given to our knowledge. What is given to human knowledge is phenomenon, which Husserl understands as appearance. Hence, phenomenology is the science of phenomenon. The methodology of phenomenology is descriptive without recourse to natural prejudices or preconceptions. Therefore, Husserl defines phenomenology as a presupposition-less science. Phenomenology as a presupposition-less science must bracket (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">epoché</i>) the assumptions of the natural sciences in order to analyze the data of pure consciousness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">At the heart of the crisis of modernity, says Husserl, lies the enterprise of natural science. Although he profoundly celebrates the success of the natural sciences, and even aims to develop philosophy into a rigorous science, Husserl nevertheless criticizes the assumptions and methodologies of the natural sciences. He believes that the natural sciences, over the years, instilled a defective outlook in the modern man (woman) with regard to the constitution and understanding of the world. The natural sciences rest upon the false assumption that nature is basically physical. Thus, the spheres of mind, knowledge, value, judgment, and culture are contingent upon corporeality. The natural scientist rejects and denies the possibility of the existence of a self-contained science of the spirit or mind. This situation, says Husserl, explains to a large degree the crisis of modernity. To insist that the sphere of the spirit or mind must be understood according to the dictates of the natural sciences reflects, says Husserl, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">naiveté</i> of modern scientific rationalism. The new science of phenomenon must confront the growing skepticism of the modern man (woman) over scientific positivism and its philosophical derivations. The analysis of phenomena as they appear to consciousness, while bracketing the assumptions of the natural sciences, is the goal of this new science. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">According to Husserl, phenomenology must honor Descartes for grounding modern philosophy on the primacy of the cogitating self. For both Husserl and Descartes, experience revolves around the self, and the source of knowledge is the ego. However, while for Descartes the subjectivity of the subject (ego) becomes the first axiom in a logical sequence, which enables him to deduce a series of inferences about reality, Husserl sees the self as the matrix of experience. Husserl’s goal is to discover and describe experience in its pure form as the immediate data of consciousness. He criticizes Descartes for moving beyond the conscious self – the ego – to the notion of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">res extensa</i> (extended substance, body). This Cartesian shift</span><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">fastens the subject to an objective reality and in so doing generates the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ghost in the machine </i>theory otherwise known as the mind-body dualism. Instead, Husserl thinks that pure subjectivity most accurately describes the fact of human experience. Moreover, whereas Descartes emphasizes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cogito ego sum</i> (I think, therefore I am), Husserl says that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ego cogito cogitatum</i> (I think something)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>perfectly captures human experience. Husserl’s position here is informed by the relationship that exists between consciousness, thinking, the object of thought and intentionality, which creates the phenomena of experience. Consciousness is always the consciousness of something (Stumpf & Fieser, 422). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Phenomenology as a Method</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Heidegger’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being and Time</i> begins by questioning the meaning of being and the understanding of phenomenology. Heidegger sees phenomenology as a method rather than a science. Departing from Descartes and Husserl, Heidegger defines phenomenology anew. Phenomenology is no longer the science of phenomena, but rather a method of doing philosophy. Phenomenology is a method through which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dasein</i> or being reveals itself. The German word Dasein comes from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">da </i>(here or there)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>and the verb<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> sein </i>(to be).<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Literally, Dasein means “being there or being here”. This is Heidegger’s term for entity, being, humanity, person, man, existence, etc. Sometimes, Heidegger uses the term Dasein to emphasize what he calls the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ontological difference</i>. That is, the difference between being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as</i> an entity (<i>das Seiende</i>) and the being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of</i> an entity(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">das Sein</i>); the "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is-ness</i>" or existence of whatever is. Being as an entity is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ontical</i>, while the being-ness of an entity is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ontological</i>. Being as humanity is the only Dasein capable of posing an ontological question about life. This further distinguishes being into man or woman as entity, and other non human entities. Strictly speaking, Dasein or being is each one of us.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Furthermore, the phenomenology of Dasein is hermeneutics (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Auslegung</i>). Heidegger borrows this term from Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Schleiermacher adds something new to hermeneutics, namely, the art of listening. If a text is to be allowed to speak, says Schleiermacher, the human art is an art of listening. Heidegger broadens hermeneutics to encompass the interpretation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dasein</i>’s self-understanding. In so doing, he takes the Greek word </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="DE" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">j</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="DE" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">a</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="DE" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">i</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="DE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">νόμεν</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="DE" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">o</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="DE" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ν</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> very seriously: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Als Bedeutung des Ausdrucks “Phaenomenon” ist daher festzuhalten: das Sich-an-ihm-selbst-zeigende, das Offenbare</i>” –…phenomenon, that which reveals itself…- (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sein und Zeit</i>, 28). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Human existence reveals itself. Therefore, phenomenology as a method uncovers that, which is rather concealed. Phenomenology as hermeneutics is the process of self-understanding that is possible for Dasein. Being is a kind of entity that interprets. Dasein or being does not seek to define its own properties, but rather endeavors to understand the possibilities of its existence (Johnson, 16). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Phenomenology as an approach or a method does not seek to impose a structure of understanding on being. It does not require the subject to stand over against an object of understanding. If the question of the meaning of being is to be viable, says Heidegger, it must be posed in such a way that being shows itself and on its own accord. Meaning must not be imposed on being from without. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the world, Dasein or being reveals itself in two ways; as authentic or inauthentic. In either form, anxiety as a mode of being plays a fundamental role. The inauthentic man or woman, in his or her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">average-everydayness</i> recoils in the face of anxiety and takes refuge in the impersonal world of the public-self, the world of “the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they”</i> or the crowd. Heidegger distinguishes between fear and anxiety. Fear has an object that causes fear in someone; thunderstorm, war, etc. Anxiety, on the other hand, is fear whose object or source is not readily located. Anxiety is the fear of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no-thing</i> – the nothingness of one’s being. It is the ever impending fear of death. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The inauthentic being flees from death in daily life. Death is always the death of the “other” shrouded in comforting euphemism: “he is asleep”, “she has gone to heaven”, “she just passed away”, etc. Unfortunately, says Heidegger, death is a personalized event. No one can experience the death of the “other”. Thus, anxiety as a mode of being is something good for authentic existence. It snatches the authentic person out of the world of the crowd and re-positions him or her in the world of self-investigation. Anxiety forces the authentic being to reveal itself by confronting the future in everyday events of life. This important role of anxiety is central to Heidegger’s conception of time as a metaphysical event, rather than a chronological instance. Temporality is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">movement of Dasein’s becoming</i>, a confrontation with the future. Death, which is the future, is Dasein’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uttermost possibility</i>. For Heidegger, our existence is “being unto death”. When we anticipate death, we live authentically. Anxiety makes authentic existence possible. Hence, the authentic person attempts to accomplish a given set of goals in everyday life, and in so doing, reveals his or her existence as a real, purposeful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being-in-the-world</i>. Therefore, phenomenology is the unfettered, self-manifestation of being.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">References</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Martin Heidegger, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sein und Zeit</i>, Tuebingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Patricia Johnson, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On Heidegger</i>, Belmont: Wadsworth, 2000</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Samuel Enoch Stumpf & James Fieser, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Socrates to Sartre and Beyond</i>, New York: McGraw Hill, 2008</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Paul Nnodim teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Leo Tolstoy</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Recollection is Inherent in Artistic Communication</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Alex Elvin</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In his definition of art, which states that art is the communication of a past emotion, Tolstoy intentionally excludes the possibility that art could be the communication of a present emotion. In his essay, “What Is Art?”, excerpted in Thomas E. Wartenberg’s anthology, <i>The Nature of Art</i>, Tolstoy implies that all communication requires the recollection of past emotions:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">To call up in oneself a feeling once experienced and, having called it up, to convey it by means of movements, lines, colours, sounds, images expressed in words, so that others experience the same feeling – in this consists the activity of art. Art is that human activity which consists in one man’s consciously conveying to others, by external signs, the feelings he has experienced, and in others being infected by those feelings and also experiencing them</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (Wartenberg, p. 108).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tolstoy opposed the immediate and superficial nature of previous definitions of art and sought to replace it with meaningful substance. Tolstoy favored the concrete over the mystical. He remarks about the insufficient efforts of previous theorists to define art in terms of beauty. Such fluffy, mystical definitions, he argued, do not get to the heart of the matter. Preoccupied with beauty, those attempting to define art in such a way are missing the point of art altogether by not focusing on art’s practical meaning to humanity. The circular, non-concise definitions of art “as the manifestation of beauty and of beauty as that which pleases” (Wartenberg, p. 104), are likened by Tolstoy to defining eating as “that which causes pleasure.” That definition of eating does not satisfy what it means to eat, just as a definition of art as “that which causes pleasure” does not answer the question, What is art? Tolstoy dropped beauty altogether from his definition, in favor of a focus on art’s concrete significance to humanity. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 9pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><div align="left" class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Thesis XII: A Philosophical Review </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">is published biannually as an open forum promoting respectful philosophical exchanges among students, faculty, and the public. Submissions reflect a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially encouraged to participate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Address all correspondence to: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Dr. David K. Johnson, Editor</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> </span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Thesis XII: A Philosophical Review</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Department of Philosophy, IDS, and Modern Languages</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: left; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">North Adams, Massachusetts 01247 </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Telephone: (413) 662-5448.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Email: d.johnson@mcla.mass.edu.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Fax: (413) 662-5368.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Associate Editor: Dr. Matthew R. Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Email: m.silliman@mcla.edu</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Without the focus of beauty getting in the way, Tolstoy is able to explain exactly how art affects us. “The activity of art is based on the fact that man, as he receives through hearing or sights the expressions of another man’s feelings, is capable of experiencing the same feelings as the man who expresses them” (Wartenberg, p. 107). He elaborates that “On this capacity of people to be infected by the feelings of other people, the activity of art is based” (Wartenberg, p. 107). But the quality of being able to infect another with feelings does not in itself make something art. The<i> intention</i> to make those feelings infect someone is what makes something art: “Art begins when a man, with the purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs” (Wartenberg, p. 107). Throughout Tolstoy’s essay, artistic communication implies the “calling up” of past emotions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Why, then, does he not address obvious contradictions to that implication? To many, forms of art such as musical improvisation defy the assumption that art must be the calling up of a past emotion. Tolstoy, while not directly addressing that example, assumes that the reader will understand that his definition covers it as well. There is a common misunderstanding that musical improvisation is not based on preparation, thinking, and memory. Even something as seemingly free of rules as improvisation is always initiated by a desire to do something at least similar to what has happened before. And if there is no desire, and someone accidentally starts improvising, chances are he or she will start to look for something to communicate based on past experience. Otherwise it would be no different from yawning, laughing or crying, things that Tolstoy explains may “infect” us but that are not intentional and, therefore, not art. Communication itself is based on recollection. Any form of art, Tolstoy would say, is a form of composition, even musical improvisation. Such examples are only spontaneous in the sense that the artist cannot go back and touch things up. But improvisation is based on skill and attention, which accrue from practice and experience. Nothing comes from nowhere, especially art.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Rather than viewing art as fixed in the present, as something that pertains only to a particular “society, circle, and time” (Wartenberg, p. 109), Tolstoy emphasizes the role of art as trajectory. In his definition, the deepest value of art is its ability to allow us to experience the feelings of other people from both the present and from past times and to allow us to transmit our own feelings to others. Because of art, he writes, one “has access to the feelings experienced by his contemporaries, to feelings lived by other men thousands of years ago, and it is possible for him to convey his feelings to other people” (Wartenberg, p. 109). To Tolstoy, the integrity of communication is found not in the immediate “nowness” in which people so hastily profess the beauty of things, but in a more practical way, where one thing leads to another with purpose and meaning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The present is founded on the past. As Charles Darwin began to prove with his work on evolution a few decades before “What Is Art?” was published, everything comes from somewhere. Nothing can exist out of context. John Dewey, whose definition of art is similar in many ways to Tolstoy’s, writes that “all deliberation, all conscious intent, grows out of things once performed organically through the interplay of natural energies” (Wartenberg, p. 142). As thinkers like Tolstoy, Darwin and Dewey show us, to understand something requires a knowledge of how it comes to be. When investigating a phenomenon, the events leading up to it are perhaps the most important things to understand.</span><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Alex Elvin is a student at MCLA</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~ </span></i></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Socratic Method</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">To the extent that our practice respects its namesake as we know him from Plato and Xenophon, teaching that employs a Socratic method will have several distinctive features. I propose the following for discussion:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socratic method is conversational (or dialogic) in form and spirit</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> – interlocutors must be willing to say what they really think, and give their actual (even if provisional) assent to each step in the conversation before it can properly move forward. Since dialogue must be responsive to what all participants have to say, it cannot progress toward predetermined conclusions except in response to the participants’ interest.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> [Corollary: Faculty cannot force dialogue on a class any more than administrators can impose it wholesale on a curriculum, as it depends on a high degree of trust, respect, and cultivation of a safely interactive learning situation.]</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socratic method is risky – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">One cannot prepare fully for it, since the dialogue must address and seriously consider whatever positions and assertions its participants propose. In dialogue, the questions one raises must not be veiled answers, but rather expressions of honest curiosity, and their resolution will thus often remain incomplete. The Socratic insistence on fallibility (even that of the professor!) keeps the conversation open-ended and surprising.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">[Corollary: Socratic dialogue is not an efficient pedagogical method for ‘covering material’]</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socratic method is friendly</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> – such a conversation’s aim is never dominance or self-aggrandizement (much less grades or credentialing) but a deepening of mutual admiration. The basis of this admiration, however, is not merely personal affection; it is rooted in a shared passion for intellectual rigor, and the consequent willingness to follow the best available arguments wherever they lead. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> [Corollary: The bullying classroom interrogation of students seen in Hollywood caricatures of law professors are the opposite of ‘Socratic.’]</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socratic method pursues truth</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> – it must matter greatly to all participants in a Socratic conversation that what they say aims at the truth of the matter under discussion. At the same time, Socratic inquirers are rigorously non-dogmatic; they accept that they may well be mistaken, so welcome effective refutations of their provisional statements. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">[Corollary: to the extent that a postmodern or deconstructive perspective denies the usefulness or meaningfulness of the notion of truth, such an approach is anti-Socratic.]</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socratic method is more than a negative tearing-down </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">elenchos</i>), but is equally concerned to articulate and examine actual propositions about the nature of things and the best way to live. Socrates used his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">elenchos</i> both to embarrass arrogant and prominent persons, as well as to prepare his friends to engage the search for truth with the requisite humility. In the latter case, at least, he did not stop with our awareness of our ignorance, but used this as a platform from which to try as best he could to understand the world, and to learn to live better. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">[Corollary: merely destructive skepticism or cynicism are neither the means nor the end of Socratic method]</span></i></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~ </span></i><br />
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</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Qualifying the One in Plotinus</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Some Preliminary Remarks</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Seth Kershner</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Plotinus (205-270), in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enneads</i>, describes a metaphysics of three hypostases or – roughly speaking – levels of being, among which the One (or alternatively the Source or the Good) is the focus of this article. My aim will be to demonstrate the legitimacy of Plotinus’ notion of the One, and defend it against charges that it is an extravagant notion whose absence would little impact on the other branches of his thought. I hope to set Plotinus’ often confusing account of the One apart from other writers in the mystical tradition, whose invocations of the ineffable often have little to do with other areas in philosophy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">First of all, it is important to note that in contrast to the multiplicity of being at the levels of Intellectual Principle and Soul, the highest hypostasis (the One) carries the odd distinction of being beyond both being and thought; paradoxically the cause both of all things and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no</i>-thing. While the One is prior to the Intellectual Principle, from which the Soul in its turn derives its being, in the One there is neither diversity nor intellection nor need of anything prior to or greater than itself. Immobile and self-sufficient, Plotinus describes it as being “good in the unique mode of being the Good above all that is good.” (VI. 9)</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 7pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 7pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In what way does this category of the One relate to Plotinus’ larger structure of thought? In the first instance, the One is entirely at the center of the metaphysics and ontology under discussion in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enneads</i>. I mean this in the sense that the One is responsible for two types of causality. It is the efficient or first cause of all, bringing things into existence and sustaining them, since by being “radically present throughout all levels of the system,” the entirety of the cosmos takes its being through ongoing participation in the One.</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Through emanation, moreover, the One produces the Intellectual Principle and Soul, each at a subordinate level of being. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As emanation is linked to the One’s generative role as causal principle in Plotinian metaphysics, so reversion – the soul’s journey back to its source, the Good – is intimately tied to the One’s final causality. For Plotinus, the ultimate goal or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">telos</i> of life lies in contemplation of the One. He sums this up nicely in Ennead VI. 7, when he says that the Good is for the soul both “its beginning and end; its beginning because it comes from there, and its end, because its good is there.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Plotinus did not have a thoroughgoing ethical theory like Aristotle’s, but this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">telos</i> of human life figures so prominently in his system that certain moral proscriptions follow: namely, avoid the bodily. Purity and a cautious regard of the material world emerge as primary duties. Following the good and virtuous life is essentially a crafting of oneself “in the likeness of God.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This shows why a skeptical reader should take care not to dismiss the seemingly obscure dwelling on the void that one finds in the Enneads. Plotinus’ thought is not errantly or extraneously mystical. Highly personal though his insights may be, insofar as they impinge on the One within his system of metaphysics, they are neither impractical nor ineffable. Rather, the One is indispensable to the whole system of thought, and can be understood in relation to shared human experience. This is so in the sense of its providing a double causality – decidedly non-Christian in its activity, but creative nonetheless – that stands at the apex of all being and at the core of human activity. Also important here is the primacy of the path: the good life for mortals is one spent pursuing the all-Good. This final contemplation of the One has ethical implications as well: controlling our behavior, we seek to become closer to our source.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Seth Kershner is a recent graduate of MCLA</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Defending Religion to Nietzsche</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jennifer Thomas</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Father Kelly walks between the pews of the dark church, fingering the dark wood of the benches, arranging the hymnbooks, anything to distract him from the lingering disquiet that remains after that last conversation. He pictures the parishioners seated among him, waiting on him to proclaim the gospel, to expel their fears, to instill in them a sense of hope. He imagines Mrs. Laurel, a plump octogenarian who prides herself on baking the best brownies for the winter carnival, seated beside young Ashley Silver, the parsonage’s best choir girl. He sees them all, watching intently with somber eyes, taking communion from his holy hands, whispering “Amen” at the end of prayer. Had he disappointed them?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Father Kelly is truly beneficent. He joined the seminary to help others, to spread the Word of God. He is trusting, gentle, intelligent, and not the type to pass judgment. He scowls at the accounts he reads in the paper of priests ignoring the teachings of the Bible, engaging in decidedly sinful actions. Further, his confession is a catharsis; he truly listens, with calm comfort and plaintive regret. But, he always forgives, as Jesus had taught him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When Bill Foster walked into the church this afternoon, Father Kelly expects to serve as he always does, handing down “Hail Mary”s as the path to redemption. Instead, he finds the high school sophomore deeply troubled, clutching a copy of the Pocket Nietzsche he bought for 25 cents at a yard sale. Seated in the pew closest to the altar, father Kelly listens.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“Why is God dead?” begins the boy, his eyes searching the priest’s. The Father knows the boy longs for answers, coming to ask a man with a direct connection to the Lord.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Father Kelly shakes his head sadly and places a hand on Bill’s shoulders. “Of course God is not dead,” he says earnestly. “Can you not see him in the world around you? Can you not feel him in your soul? Do you not witness his power and glory?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Bill looks away and raises his copy of the dog-eared book.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“Nietzsche says he’s dead. He claims that churches are nothing more than tombs not that God has been killed,” Bill starts. He is smart, inquisitive, and he wants answers. He decides to plunge – headlong – into the discussion. “No longer can we rely on the values given by God and the Church, he says. Instead, we must reject God and replace our taught morals with our own.” He breathes deeply. “Our values are <i>bad</i>. They are not valuable. This is what he means when he says that God is dead…that our morals are no longer ‘good,’ and we must strive to leave our comfortable morality. God is no more; why should his handed-down morals survive?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Father Kelly, surprised by what seems like an attack on his personal integrity, sits back against the stiff pew, sighing. What can he tell this young man about God’s infallibility, about his incomprehensible plans, his watchful eye?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“Yes, God gives us our values,” the priest begins. “But, they are not <i>bad</i> – not evil or malevolent. They are set for us, because the Lord wants us to be protected. He understands the temptations of the flesh, and his morals – the ones I teach you in this House of God – mean to keep us from deviating from his virtuous path. Only through God can man live a moral life, and to step away from his caring light will only cause harm. His values are not to constrain you; they are to guide you through life.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The boy seems unsatisfied. Father Kelly continues. “If man were to set his own morals, how could he get into Heaven? Only God knows the true way. The only means to true salvation is through the Lord’s plan, Billy. Adopt his values as your own, and you will be saved. Attempt to create your own, and you risk losing his guidance. Do you understand?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Bill nods. But, he has another question. “Nietzsche says that priests are corrupt. He claims that they are characterized by ‘self-deceiving fraudulence.” Bill flips through the book and finds the quote he seeks. “It says ‘Having sacred tasks, such as improving, saving, or redeeming mankind—carrying the deity in his bosom and being the mouthpiece of imperatives from the beyond—with such a mission a man naturally stands outside all merely intellectual valuations: he himself is sanctified by such a task, he himself is a type of a higher order! What is science to the priest? He is above that! And until now the priest has ruled! He determined the concepts of “true” and “untrue”!’”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Father Kelly, slightly miffed, merely waves off the criticism. It isn’t the first time he’s heard a rebuff of this sort. Someone always claims that priests are pompous, above all others, finer in mind, body, and soul. God chose him to be His disciple. His superiority was granted by God solely, and judgment was of no relevance to any other. There’s no need to justify his position to a young boy, and he tells him so.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Jennifer Thomas is a recent graduate of MCLA</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Invisible Armor</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">A Dialogue with Diogenenes the Cynic</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Greg Tessier</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Persons of the Dialogue</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Diogenes of Sinope</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gregory J. Tessier</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Scene</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Late night, the bedroom of GJ Tessier. Gregory J. Tessier enters, glass of water in hand. Diogenes stands before him.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gregory J. Tessier. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ah!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Diogenes of Sinope. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I am<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Diogenes. Who are you?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">G. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Diogenes the Cynic? I’m writing a dialogue about you. I’m Greg. Can I ask you some questions, to help me with this dialogue?<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i> I must admit, however, I’m not interested in your biographical information, in your life in Athens. Your ideas interest me more.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>The two—my life and my ideas—are inseparable.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G. </i>Right. Praxis.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>But, so much of what is written about you is apocryphal… anyway, I have several questions. In embracing frosted statues in winter, and lecturing to a statue garden, you provoke a strong reaction. The Athenians notice. Is this a teaching tool?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">D. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">How do you know this story is not merely apocryphal?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">G. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This is misdirection… what about the story Diogenes Laertius tells where you enter the theater as others leave. When asked why, you respond: “It is what I have been doing all my life.” You could easily have entered an empty theater.<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>Who?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">G.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> What? Oh, Laertius wrote a biography of you. He wrote it Something like five hundred years after you died. Or apparently died…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">D. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There is essentially no difference between your time and mine.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">G. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There is one difference which should concern you: Cynicism no longer refers to a school of thought but an attitude. Laertius writes: “When a man said to him that it was a bad thing to live; ‘not to live,’ said he, ‘but to live badly.’” In this conversation you represent one notion of Cynicism, the other man represents another. Ours. Explain to me, in your own terms, what constitutes a Cynic?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> D.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> I do as I please. Others should do the same.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G. </i>Do you mean people should indulge every wish and act upon every desire, or is doing what one wants dependent on one’s intellectual maturity? If everyone did exactly as they pleased, there would be problems.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.15in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">D. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">If we do what we want, then we will all become philosophers. Acting in accordance with nature, like living simply, is being a philosopher, is being wise. This is what I mean.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G. </i>Your reasoning begs the question, but I’ll move on. Laertius writes that when you saw a child drinking with his hands, you threw away your drinking cup. You said, supposedly “That child has beaten me in simplicity.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>I’m learning a lot about myself. Let’s hear something besides a question.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G. </i>Fine. There’s a story of a man striking you. You say something like, “what a strange thing that I should wear a helmet without knowing it!” The armor of Cynicism may guard one from cruelty and callousness; it also wards off kindness and generosity. This is, as I see it, the fatal flaw of Cynicism. Also, you deal in demystification, yet your words can be extremely obfuscating. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> D. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">You are resigned to the fact you will never receive a truthful answer from me?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> G. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Are you teaching me right now?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>Have you learned anything?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G</i>. I think so. You are a teacher, and the street is your Academy. Cynics live amongst the people. So, I think, while donning the invisible armor of Cynicism can be an empowering act, it is also a statement of purpose. Cynics wish to act as the catalyst for cultural change. Cynics, perhaps we can say, are motivated by love, and not hate… You know, Diderot says that one is born a cynic. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>This man was clearly born an imbecile.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G. </i>You know, you are very predictable—</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Diogenes knocks the glass out of Greg’s hand. It shatters on the floor, splashing water.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Very long pause.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> G. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In this moment, I’ve tried to identify the key tenets of Cynicism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>Tell them to me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G. Takes a breath. </i>Live simply; wear armor; live simply and thoughtfully; work for the betterment of your environment through direct action and physical engagement. And although it comes disguised, in Cynicism there is an essential unspoken element: love. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>And the work of this program, is this what you feel you must do?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> G. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I need to start writing</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">D. </i>Can you do this?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G. </i>I don’t know. I can certainly write this dialogue.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And Diogenes is gone. Greg begins to clean up the glass. He sits, and begins to type.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Greg Tessier is a recent graduate of MCLA</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Objection, Your Honor</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kevin Pink</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Humanity is a curious beast that loves to organize things. Regulation of solid, tangible objects is an easy task. However, attempting the same project with more nebulous things, primarily concepts, is quite difficult. Thus, humanity chooses to see art as a solid, concrete entity. George Dickie, for example, correctly took for granted the idea that art objects are artifacts in his essay <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis</i>. WordNet defines an art object as “a work of art of some artistic value.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines an artifact as “something viewed as a product of human conception or agency rather than an inherent element.” By these definitions, all art objects are indeed artifacts, as art objects must be created by humans. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Classical art is composed of artifacts. Statues, paintings, engravings- these are all artifacts. Even modern art, with its urinal fountains and faux Brillo boxes, provides artifacts. This theory prevents the consideration of examples of nature (such as a sunset) as art, as they provide no artifact. Humans have no control over the sun’s rising and setting. Photographing or painting the sunset creates an art object that is also an artifact; this does not, however, make the sunset art. The photograph is art, but the sunset itself is not. Art objects, as the products of human efforts, are most decidedly artifacts. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What is to be said for less-tangible arts? After all, humans know such things as dancing, war, and diplomacy as arts. This is no mere semantic ruse. These things, and many others, are also art. The above definition of artifact states that any product born of humanity’s efforts is an artifact. It is left to the artifacts produced by these less concrete arts to symbolize them. A bridge between countries that had been enemies, a playbill, and a battlefield cemetery are examples of artifacts that signify the efforts of humanity: art objects that are diplomacy, a musical performance, and war. Thus through representation do we come to see these less-obvious art forms for what they truly are. This type of thinking gives the phrase “representational art” a new meaning. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Kevin Pink is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> Cited in Jason Saunders, Ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Greek and Roman Philosophy After Aristotle</i>, Free Press: 1994, 268. </span></div></div><div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> Kenney, J.P., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mystical Monotheism: a study in ancient Platonic theology</i>, Brown University Press: 1991, 144. </span></div></div></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-32405175693118155982012-06-08T15:50:00.001-04:002012-06-08T17:32:04.750-04:00Volume 14.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><style>
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<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 36pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Review</span><span style="color: white; font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 14 • Number 1 </span></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">December, 2006</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Essays: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nathaniel Thorn </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">REASON AND FAITH<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Jennifer Valera</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">CONFIDENTIALITY AND TRUST<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Tyler</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> Rousseau</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">LIBERTY</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> AND PRIVATION</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Against a Libertarian Notion of Property<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Ryan Quinn</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">VEGAN TACTICS<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Matthew D. McGrath</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ART</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Are You Experienced?<span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Fiction: </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Amanda Rosenblatt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">WE ARE JUST HERE<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><h3 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Reason and Faith</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></h3><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nathaniel Thorn</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">People will often attempt to resolve debates regarding the existence of god by claiming that both religion and science are faith-based. That is, one may put his or her faith in science (or reason), or conversely in god. In this way, it appears as though either position is equally suitable, thereby apparently resolving the tension. However, there is good reason to think that having faith in god, or religion, is crucially different from having faith in science. As a result of this equivocation the claim that religion and science are both faith-based is fallacious. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Faith in its most limited sense typically means belief and/or trust. As such, it is fair to say that faith in god is the same as faith in reason, or science. However, having faith in god is certainly different from having faith in science in, at least, one very crucial sense. Faith in god is not merely belief in god’s existence, but belief in god in the absence of any empirical or rational evidence or proof. In fact, Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard argues precisely for this sort of faith in god, and against any attempts for proof of god, as such proofs would undermine faith, “whereas faith had uncertainty as a useful teacher, it now finds that certainty is its most dangerous enemy” (381). For this reason, many people view faith as exceptional, or distinct. It is not merely belief or trust, but belief with no evidence, at least in regards to god or anything else that lacks good evidence. This is where religion and science differ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Scientific method demands evidence as the basis of our conclusions. Further, science is self-correcting. Biologist J. Huxley explains that “it consists of consistently and continuously testing any conclusions which may have been reached by new facts and, wherever possible, by the crucial test of experiment” (233). Also of great significance, the scientific method entails the publication of all the evidence in support of conclusions reached. One could say science is faith-based, in the sense that people trust or believe in it, but they base this belief on the best evidence available; they do not believe in spite of such evidence.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There are, of course, many people who claim that there is sufficient evidence for belief in god. Evidence for god’s existence may include the bible, first- and second-hand accounts of miraculous events, or subjective religious experiences. The objection illustrates that there is no theory-neutral way to specify the necessary conditions for x serving as evidence for y. That is, all observation statements (the core of scientific evidence) are to some extent theory-laden. As a result, all claims about the world will exceed the evidence, and to some extent be speculative. For example, across the room I can see a bookshelf, and this sensory experience serves as evidence for the bookshelf’s existence. However, it only serves as evidence to the extent that I accept realism as an ontological theory; believe my sensory apparatus to be trustworthy, etc. In this way, both scientific and religious claims appear to be speculative, or as some might prefer to say, faith-based. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The implication of this objection is that any or all presumptions are equally valid; any attempt to argue that one set of assumptions is superior to others will be question-begging, since any proofs or arguments will entail presuppositions. However, might some assumptions be more suitable than others for explaining data? An explanation entails making something more plain or comprehensible; otherwise one would be missing the point. We do not clarify phenomena by appealing to mysterious forces or entities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Multiplying entities beyond necessity, it seems, would do little good in explaining anything. Rather, one ought to be parsimonious and adopt the simplest assumption in the interpretation of data, if one is intent on explaining or understanding it. This claim has little or nothing, to do with faith, as it is simply a consequence of the notion of explaining. Although both scientific and religious claims are to some extent speculative and theory-laden, it seems that scientific assumptions are more suited to explaining data.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Works Cited</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kierkegaard, Soren. “Subjectivity Is Truth.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology</i>. Ed. Louis P. Pojman. 4<sup>th</sup> ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2003. pp. 378 - 87.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Huxley, Julian. “Religion Without Revelation.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life</i>. Ed. Connie Barlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. pp. 232 – 42.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nathaniel Thorn is a student at MCL</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Confidentiality and Trust</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jennifer Valera</span></div><pre style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></pre><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A social worker must keep anything that a child says confidential, unless it is life-threatening. Foster children dislike frequent changes in social workers assigned to them, and rightly resent adults’ failures to protect their secrets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to McDevitt and Ormrod, “children in foster care have viewpoints and rights that must be carefully considered by professionals” (515). If trust is established, the child is able to confide in the social worker and will continue to feel respected and helped. Without such trust, the social worker’s task is impossible to fulfill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">For optimal social-emotional development, children require some sort of “family” or other cluster of close, caring relationships. Rather than revealing the emotions and thoughts of a foster child to his/her family, the social worker should encourage communication between parents and child. Youngsters should feel safe in speaking their minds to their parents and social workers. For a juvenile convicted of a crime, a social worker may play a critical role in this child’s development; in addition to being a “healer” by helping to rehabilitate the child, the social worker must also play the role of a “police officer” by making sure that the child follows through with treatment (McDevitt and Ormrod 42). Since these children must learn to respect social workers, and may even form strong emotional bonds to such therapists, they deserve to have their conversations kept confidential. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">However, if a child reveals to the social worker that s/he is planning to end his/her own life, or someone else’s, the social worker must report such statements to a clinical psychologist. Contacting the police is necessary if the child makes a convincing threat to harm another person. Sisela Bok, author of “The Limits of Confidentiality,” states, “most theologians [agree] that certain types of secrets [are] not binding on professional recipients, foremost among them grave threats against public good or against innocent third persons.” It is also necessary that the social worker informs the child, prior to any discussion, that anything the child says will be kept confidential unless it is life threatening. If there is a breach in such an agreement, the child may feel disappointed but often will not take action to see that the social worker is properly reprimanded for his/her lack of respect for the contract of confidentiality. The consequence will be the effective undermining of the relationship, to the child’s detriment.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Therefore children must be informed that if a social worker fails to protect their confidentiality, they should report such betrayal. Violations of confidentiality by social workers may include revealing anything said in confidence by the child to parents, additional social workers, or other children. Such infringement should, in serious cases, result in the loss of employment. Punishment for breaching a contract of confidentiality with a child must be as severe as the discipline for breaching any other contract, as the profession itself is at stake. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Works Cited</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Bok, Sisela.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"The Limits of Confidentiality," in Joan C. Callahan, ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ethical Issues in Professional Life</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oxford: New York, 1988. p. 194.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">McDevitt, Teresa, and Jeanne Ormrod.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Child Development: <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Educating and Working with Children and Adolescents</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2004.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jennifer Valera is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Liberty</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> and Privation</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Against a Libertarian Notion of Property</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tyler</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Rousseau</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Libertarian position seems rather appealing to many people due to its emphasis on personal liberty. Appealing as it may be, the Libertarian conception of liberty, in terms of property and acquisition, is self-contradictory in that there is no taking which is not, at the same time, a privation. There are, first of all, no takings which are not takings from other people, and also, there is no possession which is does not deprive another of that taking. This claim is implicitly legal as well as moral. If one wishes to justify acquisition, then one must justify it on some grounds besides 'liberty'. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Libertarian notion of appropriation of property and the provisos regarding the possession of property go something like this (I am taking Robert Nozick to be somewhat of the paradigm case for libertarianism): <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We appropriate any object that is not already owned by mixing our labor with it, and provided that we do not leave others 'worse off' by our appropriation<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></sup></span></sup></a>. Nozick states that a person should not be entitled to own all of something 'necessary for life'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></sup></span></sup></a>. This theory of appropriation is a legal one, in that ownership is a legal as well as a practical and social constraint upon 'property'.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In relation to the Libertarian theory of appropriation that I outlined above, we will now add the Libertarian concept of liberty. According to Nozick, there ought to be no presumption of equality between persons; this would, he claims, assume that the differences that would grant one person an advantage in appropriating objects over another person are simply arbitrary<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></sup></span></sup></a>. Most importantly, he states that we have no obligation to redistribute possessions (and in fact we have an obligation not to) so as to create 'equal opportunity'<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></sup></span></sup></a> for others. There is no universal 'social whole' which transcends the good of individuals; there are only individuals, and rights must be centered on the relations of individuals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is, in condensed version, the libertarian conception of justice in appropriation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The fundamental contradiction within this theory has to do with Nozick accepting Locke's "enough and as good" clause. Certainly my appropriation of objects will necessarily limit the ability of others to appropriate them, yet I need to appropriate objects to live. The question then is to whether or not this type of appropriation is fair or just. To appropriate on the grounds of need is absolutely justifiable, whereas appropriation based on luxury is justifiable only in the sense that it is not the privation of someone else's ability to appropriate out of need. Taken in a vacuum, the Libertarian idea of 'inequality' among persons holds true, but in reality most inequality is created not by a 'Natural Lottery' per se, but instead by the lopsided appropriation of property by specific social strata. The structure of laws currently in place favor, of course, those who already posses much, regardless of how they appropriated their property. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The very principle by which Libertarians hope to maximize personal liberty is the very one by it is most constricted. The irony of this is that the ability that a person has for future appropriation is most often conditioned by the history of appropriation that extended back through their bloodline or specific social sphere. The natural "talents" or "abilities" that Nozick is really speaking of are more akin to speaking, on the whole, of poverty or wealth, one being a situation of want and the other being a situation of excess. What has created this want and this excess? The very system of takings that is supposed to maximize personal liberty!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Liberty can only be maximized in the setting of social equality where some are not allowed to appropriate superfluously while others are unable to appropriate even out of need.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I would like to read Locke in moral terms: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that his theory of property is not merely an economic one, as Nozick's has been, but instead a moral one. There is not much that is essentially new in this, except that I am taking morality to be the <i>sole </i>informing constraint of property, to the exclusion of its "legal" nature. To Locke, natural justice exists, whether or not government exists, and in fact the state exists to guard and preserve natural justice.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></sup></span></sup></a> Specifically, the primary purpose of centralized government is to protect private property. In terms of property, one may appropriate indefinitely provided that there be "enough and as good"<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><sup><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></sup></span></sup></a> left in common for others. There is hardly an economic or legal justification of the "enough and as good" proviso; it must be read in moral terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The proposition that the social process and contract that gives rise to property also imbues it with a moral nature is as fascinating as it is devastating to the Libertarian argument.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">What the Libertarian is relying on is that property is merely an economic or legally positive arrangement. According to them the real moral principle operative in this arrangement is liberty and that the preservation of freedom and non-constraint is what is morally relevant this relation. Only when we begin to restrict the free exercise of this "right" or redistribute what someone has already appropriated do we move into the moral arena. With Locke's theory, however, it seems as though the act of appropriating property itself has moral relevance. One is restricted from taking what would otherwise leave others in want; taking is not moral if it is taking what someone else needs to be free from want. The morality is in the inextricably social nature of "possessing" something this concept has no other meaning except in a social context. </span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tyler Rousseau is a recent alumnus of MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Vegan Tactics</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ryan Quinn</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There are a number of short films intended to convince meat-eating humans to give up that particular pleasure of the flesh. PETA produces a number of these, including films focusing on the factory-farm production of varying kinds of meats and dairy products. The tone of these films can range from moral condemnation to straight reporting of the facts of factory production. Most meat-eaters, however, tend to see any such film as a condemnation of a significant part of their lifestyle; I have heard many comment on the tactic of showing such videos as disgusting and offensive.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The films are disgusting and offensive, but the showing of them is a legitimate tactic. Rejecting the showing of such films is like blaming a reporter for civilian deaths because she uncovered a story about gross government incompetence in the prosecution of an unnecessary war. The films include monstrous scenes of human cruelty that the meat industry strives to keep hidden by moving their killing fields from the pastoral farm of children’s books to within the industrial compounds of the modern factory farm. By making these scenes available to the public, this footage brings people’s conceptions of the meat industry more closely in line with the reality of that industry. To reject such a goal is to reject the value of truth in a modern society.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">One other potential concern one might have with such videos is that they make vegetarians whose sole commitment to not eating meat is emotional, that someone who comes to the conclusion that eating meat is wrong after watching such footage has no rational stake in vegetarianism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other than discounting people’s ability to incorporate new information into their moral systems, this view makes a mistake about the nature of morality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Emotion and sympathy, not rationality, is the basis of morality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If these films can stir the emotions of a person enough to take a course that is rationally overdetermined, we ought not to linger on questioning their motives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additionally, once the emotional case has been made, most people come to see rational arguments which were previously inconceivable.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Ryan Quinn is a recent alumnus of MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> ~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We Are Just Here</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Amanda Rosenblatt</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">We are not pretty women. Dark circles bruise beneath our eyes and lipstick does not cover our cracked, chapped lips. We don’t have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Victoria’s Secret Angel</i> cards and we do not have the latest <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Motorola</i> phone. We cut off all our ties, so who would we call? We shave our heads and wear surplus denim and black hoodies that we get in bulk, fresh from army-navy surpluses. The sound of our combat boots echo across our dirty linoleum and hard wood floors.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">We do not attend church or synagogue – no God or Gods. We do not give our meager pay to collection plates and no one prays, at least aloud.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Our business? We read every book or essay or literary magazine we can get our hands on and make a knockoff cliff notes site that outbid our competition. Cheap prices for lazy students. Ethics, you say? How real are ethics compared to the ideas of religion or free will or government? One can study and have a career in religion yet people scoff at the idea of ghosts. Every thought we have is a ghost, society killing our originality, the regurgitation of the lemming world the demons left behind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Though we work online, we do little else with computers. We have email addresses to conduct business, but pretty much every other site is blocked. How do we spread word of our business? We offer a discount to customers if they recommend our site to at least five other friends. The more people they tell about us, the better discount. They get their resources free if they tell over 25 people. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Does that make us the very corporate fodder we are so much against? The obvious answer is no. We do not have banners on other sites advertising our services, no fliers, no shirts, no monthly sales, no member cards – it’s all word of mouth and there are certainly other places for customers to look. If the Emperor <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">looks</i> naked, the Emperor <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> naked. The truth and a lie are not sort of the same thing. Wait, isn’t that a quote from a movie? Forget I said that, even though it makes sense.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">So what is our purpose? What do we do? We have no men, so we do not date. We do not go out on Friday nights. We have no condoms. Even if we are gay, we somehow have transcended the need for affection. We do not leave for work on the daily commute, only one person per week allotted to go out and get rations, and maybe sometimes books, but only at mom and pop stores and abandoned libraries. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">So what do we do? We read, work and live. We do not have a purpose. We’re not a fight club, we’re not terrorists and we are certainly not philosophers. Does anybody ever really need a purpose? I would guess that would be a no since so many people go around looking for a purpose to life that they never sit and think to just live. So that’s what we do. We are apologists of nothingness, ideologists of universals, dogmatic women with no Dogma. We are just here. Now you have to go. Goodbye.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Amanda Rosenblatt is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Art</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Are You Experienced?</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew D. McGrath</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Art as Experience</i>, John Dewey explores the theory that art is a conception of metaphysics that exists in common experience. Though Dewey uses many ideas to convey this theory, three stand out in particular. These include observing the object as an experience, the aesthetics of the experience, and the importance of the experience. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Dewey claims that we commonly associate art with the process of creation (building, painting, or sculpting); and since art is concerned with “what the product does with and in experience,” it is not always a simple matter to understand the final product. Hence, it is not until the artifact has withstood the trials of time and human use or appreciation that a product can be understood as a work of art. Through exposure to human experience, an art object has undergone experience, and therefore is worthy of the term “art.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Dewey also argues that the ability to accept that an object is artistic lies in the very processes of living. Citing the way a bird builds a nest out of necessity, he notes that humans might hesitate to consider this art since it is not a purposeful aesthetic creation; not specifically designed to be beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, once the nest is the object of human observation, the aesthetic nature of its construction emerges.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Finally, Dewey emphasizes the idea that art is a product of human nature, and that it is through art that people convey the importance of their existence and their experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Humans have long expressed the stories of their lives by artistic means, such as cave drawings and hieroglyphics. Any human experience document in this manner has been significant and precise enough to serve as – in Dewey’s phrase -- <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">an</i> experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all such experiences are essentially aesthetic in nature.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Matthew D. McGrath is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><sup><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: Palatino; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></sup></span></span></sup></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> <i>Anarchy, State, and Utopia<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>p.151-152</span></div></div><div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><sup><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: Palatino; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></sup></span></span></sup></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> <i>Anarchy, State, and Utopia </i>p. 175 "A theory of appropriation incorporating this Lockean proviso will handle correctly the cases where someone appropriates the total supply of something necessary for life."</span></div></div><div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><sup><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: Palatino; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></sup></span></span></sup></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> <i>Ibid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>p. 226 "Whether or not people's natural assets are arbitrary from a moral point of view they are entitled to them, and to what flows from them." </span></div></div><div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><sup><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: Palatino; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></sup></span></span></sup></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> <i>Ibid</i>. p.236 He says that no "centralized process" should "judge the use" of the opportunities that people had. </span></div></div><div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><sup><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: Palatino; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></sup></span></span></sup></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> <i>Second Treatise of Government </i>Chap. XI Sec. 134 " The great end of men's entering into society , being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety."</span></div></div><div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;"><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5277093716109348436#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><sup><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: Palatino; font-size: 9pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></sup></span></span></sup></a><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> <i>Ibid. </i>sec. 33 "Nor was this appropriation of any parcel land by improving it any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use."</span></div></div></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-87323003959534165362012-06-08T15:45:00.002-04:002012-06-08T17:32:33.555-04:00Volume 12.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 36pt;"> THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";"> xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 12 • Number 1</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">September, 2004</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></u></div><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><br />
</span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Inside this Issue: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">David Langston </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">INTITIAL COMMENTS ON <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">LIBERAL EDUCATION</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> AND VALUE RELATIVIS</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">M </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Zach Natale</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">INTENTION: THE NECESSARY REQUIREMENT </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Tom Byrne</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ON THE VITALITY OF BEHAVIORISM</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A Response to Silliman</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ON OUR BEST BEHAVIORISM</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Reply to Byrne </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Maura Mills</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">WORKPLACE DRUG TESTING AS A VIOLATION OF PRIVACY </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><h3 align="center" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Initial Comments on <br />
<i>Liberal Education and Value Relativism</i> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">by Patrick Malcolmson, Richard Myers, and Colin B. O'Connell <br />
(Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). </span></h3><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">David Langston</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">While exploring the merits of a book, <i>Liberal Education and Value Relativism</i>, as a potential summer reading choice for entering students, Matt Silliman invited me to summarize my response to the book for those readers of <i>Thesis XII</i> who have taken an interest in its view of liberal education. After reading some of the book's salient portions, I found that the authors have a noble goal in view: to preserve liberal education from being swallowed by vocational training, ideological and dogmatic instruction, and a spectrum of base-metal substitutes for liberal education the authors call "value relativism." The book has the virtue of presenting its arguments in clear, focused prose that would provoke discussion and further critical thought -- or so one would hope for its role as a summer reading. <br />
<br />
At the same time, I grew restive and dismayed on more than one occasion by the terms the authors use to advance their thesis, and I finally put the book down with the conclusion that if liberal education depended on the definitions advanced by the authors, then it would fail -- and moreover, it perhaps deserved to fail. <br />
<br />
The authors rest their case on a disabling starting point that is audacious in its simplicity, not only in its articulation but also in the ramifications on display as the authors blithely extend their analysis through a range of epistemological options. I hope that the problematic starting point will be abundantly clear from the following excerpt: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Value relativism is a doctrine that holds that all judgments of value are "subjective" in the sense that they are relative to the time, culture, and personality of the subject who makes them. Hindus see cows as sacred, for example, while most North Americans see cows as potential cheeseburgers. According to the value relativist, neither view is "true" in any objective sense. In fact, there is no such thing as truth -- the world is merely a collection of equally arbitrary value judgments. <br />
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Because the doctrine of value relativism holds that there are no universally and permanently true answers to the great questions of human existence, it poses a direct and deadly challenge to the possibility of liberal education. On the theoretical plane, relativism renders the quest for human wisdom pointless. And psychologically speaking, relativism creates the most debilitating teaching environment possible for students not inclined to pursue in any serious way questions for which they believe there are no true answers. (<i>LE&VR</i> 20) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
The grounding opposition between "subjective" and "objective," as the primary distinction for analyzing value judgments, is in itself an exceedingly weak foundation. Not only have numerous twentieth-century philosophers found that distinction to be almost meaningless, but the cluster of people who have grounded their evaluations of the world in "objectivity" have anything but a distinguished track record, in part because they place a particular worldview on the pedestal of "objective universal." But, I thought to myself, the authors probably already know that because they put the problematic terms in quotation marks. But that momentary confidence was irreparably shaken when I encountered that revelatory sentence: "On the theoretical plane, relativism renders the quest for human wisdom pointless." Now, even the most dedicated Platonists and Thomists have at least had the humility to accept that while wisdom may be objective, it is only gained through a quest that is prone to making mistakes and wandering frequently from the true path. Such philosophers have further held that wisdom is not known in advance and, further still, that making the quest produces wise judgments. So when our intrepid authors, Malcomson and friends, contend that the quest for wisdom is pointless at the outset unless one already has a particular kind of goal clearly in view, I find the credibility of their argument virtually disappears. Or, I wonder, are they playing a game of sophistic logic that is decried by liberal learning? <br />
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Liberal learning emphasizes the quest for wisdom, not seizing it, conserving it, or brandishing it about boastfully. Liberal learning is modest in its claims, and it emphasizes the ground-clearing critique that is the necessary precondition for the quest for true wisdom. Our authors praise Socrates as a model of reasoning, but their attitude toward relativism suggests that they read Socrates the wrong way -- as though he began questioning the youth of Athens with a picture of the wisdom they should be exercising clearly in his mind. Socrates is a stronger and more enduring model if we regard the process of Socratic dialogue as an open-ended process that will treat all conclusions as provisional (rather than "universal" and "permanent") because every claim will be subjected to still further testing and interrogation. A good liberal arts college places those values, not the confirmation of universal and permanent wise sayings, as the foundation of its project. <br />
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To summarize, I find the judgments assembled above in our sample text troublingly simple-minded and reductive. The authors seem to be blissfully -- or perhaps perversely -- ignorant of several competing alternatives that are neither so starkly pessimistic nor so absolute about the human prospect. For one, the authors ignore the view that considers our values to be both historically constructed and progressively improved (and improvable). Equally, the authors skip over the view that value judgments can be ranked, and that some value judgments are local and transitory while others are more universal and enduring. Even if one steadfastly claims that ethical norms are permanent, one could still regard the description of cows as either sacred or as cheeseburgers-on-the-hoof as two <u>relative</u> value judgments, each of which entails more universal values. One could then say that the two ethical postures toward cows have only dimly grasped a more universal principle. In that vein, a third possibility the authors overlook is the view that ethical norms may be badly formed, poorly articulated, and/or incompletely understood. <br />
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Instead, they devote the remainder of their book to constructing a fairytale in which liberal learning is a small clearing of enlightenment surrounded by dense thickets in a dark wildwood populated by predatory relativists and nihilists. Their analysis employs the presumption that liberal learning will exclude the nihilist option and, equally, that all varieties of relativism are equally unacceptable. Nothing could be further from the truth (please note my unabashed use of this problematic term). Practitioners of liberal learning must regard relativism and nihilism as perpetually part of the conversation about the status of values. Liberal learning degenerates into the recitation of intellectual pablum when relativism is rendered as an impossibility of systematic thought. The all-or-nothing approach to "universal" and "permanent" values adopted by the authors is not only philosophically crude and historically simplistic, but it also exhibits the hubris of born-again ideologues who love to pit their newly found certainty against all comers, discounting entire systems of thought to further a polemical purpose. Such habits of thinking are the opponent of a liberal education, not its hallmark or its champion. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">[N.B.: a brief squib like this in <i>Thesis XII</i> should be insufficient to persuade; it can only point toward a longer argument. To that end, I have excerpted a few other quotations from the book, Liberal Education and Value Relativism, on my website (observing the limits of the fair use doctrines of the copyright law, of course) that offers further evidence of the problematic position held by these authors. There is a further link on that page to the philosophy section of the college bulletin board, and I invite interested readers to explore the range of issues entailed by this book. The URL = http://www.mcla.edu/engl/langston/liberalrelative.html. If you get lost, just go to my website and look for the button with the words, "Liberal Learning and Relativism" on it.]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> David Langston teaches English at MCLA</span></i><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Intention: the Necessary Requirement</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Zach Natale</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">An artist is someone who produces art. The vocation of an artist is to produce meaningful, thought-provoking works, thereby invoking emotions in individuals; this is the artist’s intention. An artist’s deliberate actions – whether it is the chiseling of a stone, the placing of brushstrokes on a canvas, or the writing of words on a page – manifest his/her intentions. Thus, as the so-called “intentionality thesis” maintains, a necessary requirement for the production of art is the existence of an intention to do so. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The artist by his/her nature sets out to create works of art, things of aesthetic merit. After choosing from one of many mediums, the artist begins the production process. The artist’s intention is always, in its most basic form, to create art. The purpose of the art world is to judge the aesthetic merit of a work, not to decide whether it is art. Insofar as the artist has intended to produce something, he/she has succeeded.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Suppose an artist begins with one particular intention, and then produces something other than what he/she initially intended. The intentionality thesis still holds, since, as T.S. Elliot writes, “No poet, no artist of any art, [grasps the] . . . complete meaning [of the artwork] at the onset of creating it (Miller, 146). The elements of artistic production thus involve necessarily guided actions, objectives, and intentions. Without intention, objects are merely objects. Using intention to identify art makes it possible to include all aspects of art including both traditional and nontraditional forms. The art world functions simply to decide if a work’s qualities are aesthetically commendable or aesthetically deplorable. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Works Cited</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">References</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Elliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in <u>Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: An Introductory Anthology</u>, eds. Vassilis Lambropoulos and David Neal Miller (SUNY Press, 1987).</span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Zach Natale is a student at MCLA</span></i><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">On the Vitality of Behaviorism</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">A Response to Silliman</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tom Byrne</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In his article, “Ethics and Animals: An Exchange”, Silliman misrepresents the philosophy and impact of behaviorism. In doing so he also dismisses a research strategy relevant for examining some of the very questions about animal mental life that he attempts to address. I put forth here three assertions: 1) Behaviorists have contributed a number of remarkably successful research programs that have profoundly and positively impacted a wide variety of human and nonhuman affairs, 2) Behaviorism, as it has been defined for the past 60 years, does not deny consciousness and thought, and 3) Behaviorists have much to offer in discussions of animal ethics and welfare.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Silliman labels behaviorism as a “failed research program.” I should point out that behaviorism is not a research program at all, but the rather the philosophy underlying the research conducted by behavior analysts. I do not know the criteria by which Silliman classifies research endeavors as successes or failures, but I submit the following tidbits as falsification of Silliman’s claim:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Between 1967 and 1995 the federal government spent over $500 million on Project Follow-Through, “a massive effort to find ways to break the cycle of poverty through improved education. (Grossen, 1996, p.1)” Out of eleven educational paradigms, only Direct Instruction and Applied Behavior Analysis demonstrated promising results.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Due to the rise of managed health-care and an increased focus on accountability, the American Psychological Association formed a Committee on Science and Practice charged with identifying psychological treatments with demonstrated efficacy. In 1993 the committee reported that behavior analytic treatments had proven efficacy for encopresis, enuresis, alcohol abuse, cocaine abuse, depression, obesity, tricotillomania, headaches, smoking, sex offenders, marital stress, female orgasmic dysfunction, male orgasmic dysfunction, phobias, and developmental disabilities. Considering that behavior analysis is somewhat of a pariah within the field of psychology, these endorsements are somewhat remarkable. Please also note that many of these problems have obvious mental components.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In 2003, the Surgeon General weighed in on the continuing failures of behaviorism: “Thirty years of research (<i>have</i>) demonstrated the efficacy of applied behavioral methods in reducing inappropriate behavior and in increasing communication, learning, and appropriate social behavior. . . Strategies that take a behavioral approach to youth violence can also have positive, consistent effects on violence, delinquency, and related risk factors.” </span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Skinner’s operant methodology revolutionized the understanding of psychoactive drugs, and to this day operant procedures are a mainstay of psychopharmacology research at universities, government institutions, and pharmaceutical firms. This includes an immense literature on drug discrimination, which directly asks the question “How do drugs make animals feel?”, which is undoubtedly relevant to knowing about the mental lives of animals. In addition, the most effective programs available for treating substance abuse are based heavily on operant methodology (e.g. Higgins, Silverman).</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Behavioral interventions have proven to be by far the most effective strategy for the treatment of autism spectrum disorders. Through intensive intervention, autistic children gain communication and independent living skills once thought impossible. In fact, some children have been able to transition to regular classroom education without any special support (e.g. Green 1996). </span></li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And those are just a few examples from the applied literature. One must also consider the basic literature’s contributions to learning, memory, motivation, communication, perception, aggression, etc. It may be relevant that the field’s flagship journal, <i>The Journal of The Experimental Analysis of Behavior</i>, has an impact factor that consistently ranks in the top ten of all biological psychology journals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Silliman’s statement that behaviorism denies the reality and importance of consciousness is demonstrably false. This is a prevalent academic myth and an example of what Todd and Morris (1992) refer to as the ‘power of steady misrepresentation.” Part of the problem is the term behaviorism itself, which has been associated with a number of different schools of thought during the past 100 years. Silliman’s critique would certainly be relevant to John B. Watson’s methodological behaviorism, which did in fact did deny the importance of thoughts and feelings. However, methodological behaviorism went the way of the dinosaurs well over 60 years ago with the arrival of B.F. Skinner’s influence. A major point of departure for Skinner’s <u>radical </u>behaviorism was that it included the study, admittedly theoretical, of the world within the skin. I will not argue whether or not radical behaviorism provides a reasonable accounting of thought and consciousness, but behaviorists certainly do not deny the existence of these important topics or attempt to explain them “merely as operant conditioning”. (As an aside, it is hard to appreciate the phrase “merely as operant conditioning.” This implies operant conditioning is simple and completely understood; it is not.) One need not dig too far in the current literature or in Skinner’s writings to find evidence that behaviorists have made honest attempts at including mental phenomena in their science. Citing from Skinner’s voluminous works is a bit like interpreting holy writings; one can usually find a quote to support any given argument. However numerous statements equivalent to the following can be found throughout Skinner’s texts: “It is particularly important that a science of behavior face the problem of privacy (228)”. As used by behaviorists, the terms privacy and private events refer to thoughts, feelings, and other mental activities. Skinner’s insistence on including private events in a science of behavior continues to influence behaviorism to this day. To cite just one example, in an article published in <i>The Behavior Analyst</i>, the official publication of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Wilson and Hayes begin their abstract with the sentence “Behavior analysis has long accepted the legitimacy of the analysis of private events in a natural science of behavior (p.25).” This is clearly evident if one examines current empirical research. For example, <i>The Psychological Record,</i> a journal solidly in the behaviorist camp, is currently dominated by investigations of stimulus equivalence, a largely cognitive phenomenon. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I will concede that the concept of “mind” is considered flaccid by any scientific psychologist, behaviorist or not. However this behaviorist, like most of his colleagues who find themselves “in the grip” of behaviorism, certainly does not deny the mental life of his pets. The confusion arises because behaviorists have long rallied against the omnipresent use of “mentalism” in circular explanations of behavior such as “He hit the wall because he was mad.” The behaviorist position on thinking and feeling may be stated succinctly as follows: private events must be explained; they are not in and of themselves explanations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ironically, Silliman seems unaware that many behaviorists have made and continue to make considerable contributions to the study of animal ethics and welfare. For example, in 1976, Kilgour, a scientist well versed in operant methodology, proposed five freedoms requisite for animal welfare: freedom to express normal behaviors, freedom from hunger and malnutrition, freedom from thermal or physical distress, freedom from disease or injury, and freedom from fear (yes, behaviorists do talk about feelings.) However, as a human it is difficult to know if these conditions are being met because, as Silliman correctly points out, we can’t simply ask animals how they are feeling. However, one can, with clever experimental designs, obtain relevant information. Kilgour and behaviorists who followed his example set up research programs to assess animal preferences for food, housing, temperature, lighting, and other environmental conditions (for a review see Foster and Poling, 1995). The results have made considerable impacts on farm animal welfare, and, to a much lesser extent, lab animal welfare. This research, although in its infancy and far from perfect, has resulted in concrete and practical information that has improved the lives of those animals which, rightly or wrongly, are dependent upon their human captors.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Tom Byrne teaches psychology at MCLA and is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst</span><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">On our Best Behaviorism</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Reply to Byrne</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I am grateful to Tom Byrne for taking to task my somewhat flippant remarks about behaviorism. My reply will be three-pronged: first, I will suggest that much of our apparent difference might be merely terminological; second, I will argue for a reading of B.F. Skinner contrary to Byrne’s; and third, I will suggest that unexpurgated traces of invidiously reductive thinking may yet linger in contemporary behaviorist practice as Byrne describes it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Professor Byrne is quite right that not everything that goes by the name of behaviorism suffers from the reductive foolishness I disparaged. I was indeed directing my remarks to early, reductive behaviorism as practiced by Watson and Skinner, and I ought to have said so. Studying behavior as a way to understand the mental lives of humans and other animals (and alter their behavior through conditioning) is of course legitimate and often fruitful, and some psychologists who call themselves behaviorists (or cognitive behaviorists) do just that. I have doubts about the moral appropriateness of some of their experiments, but as Byrne points out they have indeed helped to bolster our understanding of animal minds, made progress in the treatment of autism, and other fine things. I thus did not mean to imply that behavioral research had no success, but rather that what results it did produce failed to establish its radical and methodological premise – that the idea of mind is meaningless and dispensable.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">However, there remains a reductive strain in some behaviorist psychology that did not, it seems to me, die off with Watson, and far from being ‘steady misrepresentation,’ remains palpable throughout Skinner’s own writings. His magisterial pronouncements about the irrelevance of moral reasoning in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beyond Freedom and Dignity</i>, for example, suggest that the impulse to explain away (or minimize as epiphenomenal and causally inefficacious), rather than understand, our mental and emotional lives remains potent in Skinner, whatever belated and coded talk of ‘privacy’ or ‘interiority’ the inconvenient fact of consciousness compelled him to adopt. I concede, however, that there is plenty of room for reasonable disagreement about Skinner’s mature views, and no doubt close reading could uncover many contrary currents in his work.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But must psychologists really treat the concept of mind as ‘flaccid’ if they wish to be scientific? I trust that Byrne himself is not tempted by the lingering reductivism this phrase suggests (raising the question whether the fault lies not in our academic stars but in ourselves). “He hit the wall because he was mad” is plainly not an adequate explanation (we are agreed on this), but it would only be circular if we assumed, as Watson did, that ‘being mad’ literally consists of nothing other than wall-hitting kinds of behavior. Since none of us professes to make that assumption, there is no logical circle, and any complete explanation for his hitting the wall will certainly need to understand the crucial role played by the fact that he was mad. “The sun rose” may be a folk description (now a mere metaphor) of an astronomical event, but everyone really does get mad sometimes (not just those bedeviled and unsophisticated ‘folk’), and no adequate science will require us pretend otherwise. The ‘mentalism’ against which behaviorists long railed (in Skinner’s case it was the mysterious ghosts of Cartesian dualism) is a phantom of bygone centuries; science ought not, I think, feel threatened by the persistence of minds and what they do as it seeks to plumb the depths of how it all works.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></i><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Workplace Drug Testing as a Violation of Privacy</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Maura Mills</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Drug testing in the workplace is an invasion of employees’ privacy. Workplace drug testing became popular in the 1980s, after President Reagan signed an executive order leading to the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988. While written for government employees, the act soon led to drug testing in the private sector. In either case, however, statutes prohibiting workplace drug testing should exist. Not only are some types of testing—particularly urinalysis—degrading, but they also infringe upon peoples’ basic rights to be left alone. Likewise, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other opponents of drug testing argue that it violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searchers and seizures. Employers do not need a warrant or even probable cause to demand that their employees submit to drug testing. Further, drug testing cannot prove impairment on the job, and therefore is an unreasonable method of evaluating or predicting job performance. An employee can smoke marijuana weeks before testing and still test positive, but another employee can snort cocaine on the way to work and test negative, because the latter employee’s body has not yet had an opportunity to metabolize the drug.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Furthermore, drug testing can also detect many medical conditions, and such an outcome is similar to an employer having access to employees’ medical records. Such information can then be used against the employees, perhaps indirectly leading to their termination. Employers may not want to cover the costs and liabilities of employing people with heart conditions, epilepsy, depression, or diabetes, all of which can be detected through drug testing. Such testing can also detect pregnancy, another medical condition that may seem undesirable in an employee. Hair testing and other drug tests that are not as degrading as urinalysis can also detect this medical information, and therefore can be morally dismissed on the same privacy grounds as can urinalysis.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Another reason why persons innocent of drug use may object to testing is that drug tests are unreliable. Popular drug tests yield false positive results at least ten percent of the time, with less expensive tests yielding them as much as thirty percent of the time. Some of this unreliability is attributable to the tendency of drug tests to confuse legal drugs for illegal ones. For instance, Vicks Formula 44-M tests positive for heroin, Advil for marijuana, and Nyquil for amphetamines. Such unreliability is unacceptable in a test that can weigh so heavily on people’s job acquisition and retention.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Proponents of drug testing, however, maintain that because employers are legally responsible for on-the-job wrongdoings of their employees, they have a right to conduct drug tests in order to ensure that their employees are capable of safely performing their jobs. While this argument does make a valid point, it also assumes that drug testing is the only way to measure performance. On the contrary, new computer technology allows employers to evaluate employees’ performance without violating their privacy. These tests evaluate such criteria as hand-eye coordination and reaction time, both of which can directly impact safety. Organizations such as NASA and the U.S. Air Force currently employ this technology, but private sector businesses have yet to adopt it. It is, however, and acceptable alternative to the privacy invasion inherent in drug testing, and both proponents and opponents of drug testing should recognize it as such.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">References</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“ACLU Announces Settlement of Random Drug Testing Case.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ACLU of Colorado</i>. 7 August 2002. 3 April 2004. </span>release_drugsettlement.htm>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Dentzer, Susan, et al. “Can You Pass the Job Test?” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ethical Issues in Professional Life</i>. Ed. Joan C. Callahan. New York: Oxford, 1988. 211-215.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Moore, Jennifer. “Drug Testing and Corporate Responsibility: The ‘Ought Implies Can’ Argument.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Business Ethics and Society</i>. Eds. Lisa Newton & Maureen Ford. Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw- Hill/Dushkin, 2004. 195-206.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Niznik, J. Stephen. “Drug Testing in the Workplace: Is it Legal?” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Job Searching: Technical</i>. 3 April 2004. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span>library/weekly/aa090301.htm>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“Drug Testing in the Workplace.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The National Workrights Institute</i>. 3 April 2004.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span>dt_legislative_brief.html>.</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Maura Mills is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-58698122264224699842012-06-08T15:40:00.001-04:002012-06-08T17:32:56.046-04:00Volume 11.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><style>
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<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 36pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 11 • Number 1 </span></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: normal;">March, 2004</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Mistral;">Inside this Issue: </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew Silliman </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ETHICS AND ANIMALS</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">An Exchange</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Sherilyn Saporito</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">THE RESEARCH QUESTION<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">THE LADDER OF DILEMMA IMMEDIACY<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Jody Browning</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ART AS BALANCE<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">INHERENT VALUE</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Species versus Characteristics</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Monica Henry and Sarah Russell</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">PHILOSOPHY OR BEAUTY?<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">[Editor’s note:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The following is an exchange between MCLA honors students (from the fall, 2003 seminar on Ethics and Animals) and Mathew Silliman, who presented to the class ideas from his book-in-progress </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Value Added<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many thanks to Professor Silliman for his time and thoughtfulness.]</i></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Ethics and Animals</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">An Exchange</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthew<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silliman</span></div><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">The Ethics and Animals seminar has asked how we can know about the mental lives of animals, such that we may properly </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">specify their moral standing. This is a fair question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some thinkers have treated the question itself as dispositive of the </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">proposition that animals have moral standing at all, though I suspect such a move commits a fallacy of appeal to ignorance, </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">and we should not take it seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might be useful to treat the question as a version of the so-called problem of other </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">minds, for the ways we come to understand the mental lives of other people (not completely, perhaps, but sufficiently for </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">many purposes) are closely related to the ways we can grasp (with reasonable probability) the existence, nature, and degrees</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">of non-human animal consciousness.</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Of course, we cannot interrogate animals about their feelings and thoughts in all the same ways we do each other, so we </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">must make reasonable inferences based on observation and analogy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonhuman animals obviously have animal bodies like </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">our own, and their responses to given stimuli are often relevantly similar to ours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Allowing for physiological and individual </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">variation (of course, some organisms are much more similar to us than others), an inference to the best explanation </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">unclouded by presumptive human exceptionalism strongly suggests animal minds:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at least some animals probably feel such </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">morally relevant sentiments as pleasure and pain, need and comfort, fear and sympathy, and engage in rudimentary</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">inferences about their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who has lived for any length of time with a cat or dog and is inclined to deny this is </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">likely to be in the grip of a reductive theory such as behaviorism, a failed research program that once thought[!] it could </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">explain away all thought as mere operant conditioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Behaviorism failed in part because it denied the reality and </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">importance of consciousness at every level, implausibly ignoring minds altogether.</span></pre><pre style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Granting the cogency of our everyday inferences about other minds, however, it is still reasonable to ask about the details.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Since some forms of life (e.g. plants, insects) almost certainly lack mental lives in the relevant sense (absent the neurological </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">and social complexity probably requisite for conscious, individuated awareness and concern), moral philosophy will need </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">convincing criteria for identifying a boundary zone between sentient and non-sentient, as well as one between sentient and </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">sapient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reductively humanist moral theory draws only one line, and that one far too harshly and dogmatically (amounting </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">to a culpable ‘speciesism’ on the analogy with racism), given our good grounds for ascribing minds of various sorts to many </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">other animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It thus behooves us to sketch our lines tentatively, and seek to err on the side of inclusion where there is </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">reasonable doubt, pending better neurological and behavioral data.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For obvious reasons some of the lines are likely to fall </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">between species, but this result is not ‘speciesist’ in any invidious sense, for it only – and fallibilistically – seeks an accurate </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">descriptive basis for distinguishing morally meaningful types.</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">The class raises another question about so-called lifeboat cases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Specifically, the question was:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Do extrinsic and/or </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">relational values play any role in deciding moral dilemmas outside of lifeboat scenarios?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question implies a distinction </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">between moral dilemmas in general, and lifeboat scenarios as a particularly harrowing type of moral dilemma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One way we </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">might parse this distinction is in terms of directness or immediacy; lifeboat dilemmas would be those in which the decision </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">involves imminent harm to some morally considerable beings, where one or more must die (or otherwise suffer egregious </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">harm) to preserve the others from a similar fate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems evident, as the question implies, that in such cases it is appropriate </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">to bring in considerations as having moral weight that in more normal times we would rightly class as extrinsic or merely </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">prudential.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is in such cases, paradigmatically, that the distinctions between types of moral status for which I have argued </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">give us substantive guidance toward the least awful outcome:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if desperate circumstances force us to choose between a </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">moral agent and a moral patient (say an adult human and a dog), we may, indeed probably we must, prefer the human.</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">But granting that, what about less direct or immediate conflicts, what we might call everyday dilemmas?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How should I weigh,</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">for example, the duty to protect myself and my family from possible hanta virus infection, while respecting my resident mouse</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">population’s need for shelter and food?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both sets of needs in this instance seem quite basic, morally cogent, and genuinely </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">at odds with one another, though the conflict is considerably less dramatic than a lifeboat, and it may even be possible to </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">ignore it for awhile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am inclined to argue that what I have called secondary moral considerations are indeed applicable here;</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">my duty to my family’s health probably should trump the mice’s needs, though in keeping with the low-moral-intensity nature</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">of the conflict I should certainly try quite hard to find a non-fatal method to exclude them, and relocate them safely if possible.</span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>If I have properly understood the question, then, my reply is in the affirmative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, I might argue that the point is </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">analytic – perhaps what makes something a genuine moral dilemma in the first place is that first principles leave it unsettled, </span></pre><pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">demanding that we resort to considerations that are not so pure and simple.</span></pre><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Matthew Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Research Question</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Sherilyn Saporito</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I assume moral theory recognizes the moral duties we owe to some creatures and forgives us for the unavoidable deaths of others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Silliman rejects as speciesist the line drawn by traditional moral theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps, as Silliman writes, this line ought to be lower on the scale of morally relevant capacities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Re-drawing the line would make it morally wrong, in the case of many animals, for us to eat, hunt, or intentionally cause them pain for any reason; and it would give us some moral clearance for all those creatures who fall below the line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But what about using animals in research?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This question challenges most moral theories, and, so far, Silliman has not addressed this topic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He might consider it a lifeboat situation -- as either them or us -- but I suspect that he feels differently about this topic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Silliman writes: moral dilemmas demand, “that we resort to considerations that are not so pure and simple.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Following Silliman’s theory, it seems a new line would be required for vivisection, creating some middle ground between abolitionists and vivisectors. This time, the line is not drawn through animal species, but through the urgency and necessity for research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the urgency of a situation is relative, so we would have to define carefully the proper use of animals in research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This new line would not stop the research that might save human lives, it would only hinder some aspects of it; and maybe, by forcing the scientists not to rely solely on animals, they could come up with alternative research methods that would eliminate the need for animal use altogether.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Sherilyn Saporito is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Ladder of Dilemma Immediacy</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Dr. Silliman uses the example of mice threatening to spread the hanta virus infection within a human home. He suggests that such a dilemma does not call for immediate action because the conflict is considerably less dramatic then a lifeboat one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also says that one’s duties to one’s family override one’s duty to the immediate interests of the mice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Key, though, is his point that due to the “low-moral-intensity nature” of the conflict, if we were to remove the mice we ought to relocate them safely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By doing so one is still respecting them for their baseline value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So part of what they are owed is an attempt to respect their liberty to live their mice-lives freely. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Here we are weighing the safety of our family against the immediate needs of mice. Respecting the liberty to live freely and safely is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prima facie</i> duty (PFD) that we owe to all beings regardless of our relations to certain beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A truly relational conflict only occurs when one has to choose between one’s PFD’s to respect the basic interests of any two beings, such as the case where two beings are trapped in a burning house and only one can be saved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since in Silliman’s example one is only weighing one’s PFD’s to one’s family against the mice’s specific, immediate interest in using the resources of the threatened human home -- and not against any PFD’s one owes them – this is not a true lifeboat situation. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Now, unlike Silliman’s example, the case of AE is even more complicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case we relocate innocent animals to testing facilities -- thereby restricting their lives -- in order to use them as objects of science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are directly weighing PFD’s to humans and animals, yet the dilemma is not nearly as direct as a lifeboat one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Testing on animals is not equivalent to saving the lives of patients, because first the vaccines will have to be used on human beings without absolute certainty that the vaccines will have overcome important disanalogies between species and actually work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Illogically, in this the least direct dilemma of the three, instead of at least affording the animals the baseline respect they receive in Silliman’s example -- which is more direct and immediate -- we treat it like the most direct dilemma of the three: a lifeboat scenario. </span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">Shane Babcock is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 8pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Art As Balance</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jody Browning</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I define art as a balance of importance between the artist’s intention, the production, and the reflections of the audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Art is the satisfaction of an experience, and the artist must intentionally produce an experience to satisfy the audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The intention of the artist’s production is equally important to provide a pleasurable experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the viewer to have a satisfactory experience<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“an art object must be produced by an artist in anticipation of the satisfaction her audience will receive” (T. Wartenburg, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophy of Art</i>, p. 137).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The artist must produce an experience where the audience can draw meaning from past experiences and bring them to the artwork to produce immediate satisfaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This also brings an aesthetic quality to life. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The value of art is shown through the physical qualities and through the way in which a person can<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>experience it:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“art must be artistic and aesthetic” (Wartenburg, p. 137).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both artistic and aesthetic values must have an objective and a subjective side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A piece of art must be defined as an object and defined for the self or for the viewer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This makes the artwork and the opinions of the audience equally important; without the artwork, the opinions of the audience would be arbitrary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This also speaks to the artist’s intention, because without the intention to create something artistic, there would not be any aesthetic qualities to the artwork.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In every experience there is the organization dynamic, “inception, development, and fulfillment” (Wartenburg, p. 148).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All three aspects of an experience need to be accounted for to truly satisfy a person’s experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When experiencing an emotion for example, first a person must realize the emotion, then the emotion is developed into a feeling, and then the person either projects the emotion to others or he or she hides the emotion, whichever fulfills the person at that moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is also true with art, first the artist must have an intention, then the artist develops this intention into an idea to create the piece, then the finished piece projects an experience as the audience reflects on it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">If everything is an experience, how then do we distinguish experiences from art?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simple experiences, everyday occurrences, distinguish themselves from art when the creator has a desire to create an object which invokes the satisfaction of the audience and the creator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The stress of immediate enjoyment that is placed on the artwork as well as the artist is what distinguishes art from all other experiences. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">Jody Browning <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inherent Value</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Species versus Characteristics</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In Carl Cohen’s argument against Regan’s argument for animal rights (Cohen and Regan, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Animals Rights Debate</i>, p.248-249), his primary claim is that Regan equivocates on the meaning of the term “inherent value.” He says that all animals only have inherent value in the sense that they are each unique and irreplaceable beings (Sense 2) (p. 54). He also claims that a being can only have rights if it has the type of inherent value entailed by the possession of personhood in the Kantian sense (Sense 1). Cohen’s counterargument fails. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">First, Regan does not actually equivocate on his use of the term “inherent value” because he never uses it in Sense 1. Regan discusses Kant but then notes the problem of attributing inherent value (Sense 1) to children. He says, “My response to this challenge involves abandoning the Kantian idea of personhood as a criterion of inherent value and replacing it…” (p. 200). For Regan, the only thing that establishes inherent value is being a subject-of-a-life. Regan never says that Kantian personhood gives humans any more inherent value. Therefore, Cohen fails in his counter-argument against Regan. Cohen’s defense of his position against Regan then stands and falls with his prior arguments (in the first half of the book) for the view that the concept of rights only applies to humans. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In that case, Cohen appears to be wrong. Regan brought up the problem of children. Cohen has to argue on a speciesist line by saying that because children are part of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human</i> moral community, they have inherent value in Sense 1. Even this has its problems. Are children deserving of our equal moral respect because Kantian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">personhood</i> is inherently valuable and they will potentially acquire it, or because they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">themselves</i> are inherently valuable insofar that they are biologically of the same species as other humans? Cohen says that inherent value (Sense 1) is bound up in moral agency (p. 249); therefore, Kantian personhood is what is inherently valuable. Kantian personhood, though, is only an acquired characteristic of human beings. Either children have rights because they have an inherent value that all humans –regardless of their development- possess insofar that they are human, or rights are only attained when they acquire a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">characteristic</i> that entails rights because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it itself </i>is inherently valuable: that being Kantian personhood. Being human does not equal being a person. Biologically, being a human only gives one inherent value in Sense 2. Cohen equivocates on the inherent value of being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human</i> in general and the inherent value he assigns to the developed characteristic of Kantian personhood <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">humans may attain</i>. If inherent value in Sense 1 only lies in the characteristic of personhood, then it does not lie in the nature of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human beings as a species </i>in general. Therefore, his speciesist argument fails as well.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 8pt;">Shane Babcock is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Philosophy or Beauty?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Monica Henry and Sarah Russell</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socrates was famous both for his physical unattractiveness and for his beautiful mind, features which seem quite unrelated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will argue, to the contrary, that his outward appearance may actually have contributed to his intellectual development and his desire to make a difference in the way others thought. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">By all surviving evidence, Athenian culture valued and admired beauty very highly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Participants in Athenian society judged each person by how closely they approximated ideal standards of physical beauty, and perhaps secondarily what was in their head and heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Society often judged people on their wealth, appearance, and their talents in the arts, war, and athletics before weighing subtler features of merit and character (1).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Socrates, whose best features were his mind and his courage, was at something of a disadvantage because those were things not immediately apparent to an onlooker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Had Socrates been as attractive as Alkibiades or Pericles, he would presumably have been less approachable by ordinary people, and at the same time gotten more attention (though not necessarily of a healthy sort). This would likely have accustomed him to being showered with the attentions of important people. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is hard to imagine Socratic intellectual or personal humility developing in anyone spoiled in this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such people are seldom accepting of ‘unimportant’ people approaching them with questions, and inspire strong feelings of admiration that can quickly turn to jealousy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like anyone with too much unearned attention, a beautiful Socrates would have gotten used to people always wanting things from him, and would have rightly distrusted of the motives of strangers who approached him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His resources for conversation and insight would thus have been significantly limited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He would certainly have been less effective in his important work of questioning the world around him and bringing others to the realization that the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing for certain. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Plato himself illustrates this problem in the dialogue <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meno</i>, in which the title character is a prime example of someone endowed with good looks and affected by the excessive attention he receives from them, a fact upon which Socrates teasingly comments (2).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meno’s selfish and spoiled attitude, and his preference for colorful rather than accurate explanations, is a product of exactly the kind of attention and privilege that might well have afflicted Socrates had he been beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Absent a motive to discover an internal self-esteem, it seems unlikely <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Socrates would <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>have fared better than Meno.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Socrates Plato portrays has tremendous respect for people who realize that they are uninformed, whereas we can easily imagine a beautiful Socrates blissfully unaware of his ignorance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With no motive to question, or to try to know himself, the beautiful Socrates might have denied the world the discipline of philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But perhaps this is unfair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who knows about Socrates would say that appearance should matter very little, especially to someone with as strong a character as his.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was in Socrates’ nature to want to be around other people and to learn from them. He was always out and about seeking the intellectual company of others, and his inner voice (his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">daimon</i>) informed his decisions and drove him to pursue the truth at all costs. These things seem not to be creations of his feelings about himself in relation to others based on appearance; he was born who he was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such an argument gives away too much to predestination, however.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course a person is born with a distinctive, basic personality, but those initial traits are subject to the molding and altering of the social environment in which the individual grows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Socrates’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">daimon</i> warned him when he was about to make a mistake, but it never told him directly what to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His mind sharpened only because he was forced to find something in himself that was not overshadowed by the beauty his culture desired, and in the process he learned a new way to think about himself and to treat others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks in part to a lack of outer beauty, he turned out to be a very beautiful person. </span></div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Monica Henry and Sarah Russell are students at MCLA</span></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-78183145281906761022012-06-08T15:35:00.001-04:002012-06-08T17:33:12.400-04:00Volume 10.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 2pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 36pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 18pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 10 • Number 1 </span></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">April, 2003</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"> </span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Inside this Issue: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Rachel Dayton </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ART AS SOCIAL PRECEDENCE </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Andrew Briggs</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">ART AS INDEFINABLE </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Matthew Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">PROPOSITIONAL POVERTY</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">FREEDOM AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS</span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"> </span> <span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 2.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoBodyText3"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Art As Social Precedence</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Rachel Dayton</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In our time of instant information and small-world communication, social precedence, more than talent, determines the immediate qualification of art as such. The constant flow of information makes each individual subject to the mass media and the mass media, in turn, subject to the acceptance of individuals. Though its purpose is to make statements, demonstrate skill, and instigate contemplation, art finds appreciation only in media that are directly connected to humans as individuals and as a social body. Where there is no appreciation for art, there is no art, despite technical merit or artistic intent.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Art must evoke some sense of pleasure beyond admiration of skill, in order to have the acceptance of the masses. During any given season, year, or decade, the artistic factors (colors, technique, subject, etc.) that universally evoke subjective responses in the audience are subject to change. These qualities are present in art of all eras, but the twentieth century in particular has very distinct art forms, including paintings, music, and fashion, that can generally be separated by decades. There is a clear progression of popular acceptance of art from, arbitrarily, 1920 to 1980, and the art of each decade is specific to the time and the people of it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Unique to the twentieth century is the progressively rapid communication of ideas and information. Unlike Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings, there is an instant broadcast of the work of every modern artist to the masses throughout the world. The availability of new pieces gives the public (as opposed to scholars or the economic elite) more weight in the make-or-break status of an artwork’s success. The media can contribute to the general public’s anticipation or contem-plation of a piece through reviews and conferences, and thus the general assumption of mass acceptance dictates how the media will manipulate individuals to like, on most any level, a particular piece of art. Furthermore, artists are more aware of public opinion and, to some degree, create art within that realm. (Benny Goodman would never have played Bob Dylan, let alone written anything like it.) This is not to say that they follow particular “rules”: sometimes what makes the art, especially contemporary art, acceptable is the simple fact that it breaks the rules.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="mso-pagination: none;">One may argue that great works of art have been objects of appreciation throughout the centuries, and, therefore, while public opinion changes -- as in fads -- the definition of art does not. There is no destruction or depreciation of the masterpieces by Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, or Leonardo (it just so happens that the pop classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles enshrines all of these men). Historical precedence, having the acceptance of the media that, essentially, writes history, maintains the “great” works of art throughout the changing eras. What emotions masterpieces evoke and what ideas and messages they send to people of different ages keep certain “objective” masterpieces timeless. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Those works of “art” which fade away into the basements of museums may no longer be art, at least, not “great” or popular art as was the consideration at the height of their public appeal. Furthermore, what was not acclaimed in its day may find sanctuary in a new media outreach. Specific pieces of art -- even whole art forms -- go in and out of ‘fashion’ today, not necessarily with an underlying purpose or logical judgment. This ebb and wave of social acceptance demonstrates, in part, how modern humans are not fully able collectively to pinpoint objectivity where forms of subjective thought or intrigue dilutes decisiveness. </span></div><div class="MsoHeading8"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Rachel Dayton is a student at MCLA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Art as Indefinable</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Andrew Briggs</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">I perceive art as a phenomenon that simply cannot be defined. As Morris Weitz writes:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin: 0in 63pt 0in 0.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin: 0in 63pt 0in 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[the] attempt to discover the necessary and sufficient properties of art is logically misbegotten for the very simple reason that such a set and, consequently, such a formula about it, is never forth-</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin: 0in 63pt 0in 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">coming. (1)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Many notable theorists of art, including Clive Bell, Monroe Beardsley, and Arthur Schlesinger define as art anything capable of producing an aesthetic experience. According to Beardsley, for example, “an artwork is something produced with the intention of giving it the capacity to satisfy the aesthetic interest.” (2) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This definition has two serious problems. First, Beardsley suggests that there must be an intention involved in the creation of the artwork. This cannot be the case, since some art objects seem to be unintentional creations (the personal correspondence of Freud, for instance). Secondly, Beardsley claims that artwork must satisfy the aesthetic interest. Douglas Dempster easily defeats this claim by arguing:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 27.35pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 27.35pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Q: Can’t you see that this is an art work?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 27.35pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A: But it isn’t.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 27.35pt 0in 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Q: Yes it is. I just had an aesthetic experience which proves it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 27.35pt; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A: No it isn’t. I had no such experience. (3)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 27.35pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: 27.35pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It is clear that aesthetic experience is not central in defining art, since not every person experiences aesthetic emotions, or the same aesthetic emotions, when viewing a piece of art. </span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin-left: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin-left: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">More promising, in my view, is Morris Weitz’s characterization of art. He writes:</span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin-left: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Art is an open concept, one resembling the concept of a game, which too entails no essential characteristics shared by all games. Games at best possess what Wittgenstein has called a family resemblance: every member resembles one or another member, but none resembles all of them. (5)</span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Weitz suggests, through the use of this analogy, that while all art may possess similar properties, no two pieces of art will be precisely the same (or share all of any one set of properties), and, therefore, that it is </span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">impossible to create an explicit definition of art. </span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">References</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">(1) Morris Weitz, “Art as Indefinable.”</span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">(2) Monroe Beardsley, “Art as Aesthetic Production.”</span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0.25in; tab-stops: 373.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">(3) Douglas Dempster, “Aesthetic Experience and Psychological Definitions of Art.”</span></div><div class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 27pt 0in 0in; tab-stops: 373.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt;">(4) George Dickie, “The Institutional Conception of Art.”</span></div><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">(5) Morris Weitz, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Role of Theory in Aesthetics</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Andrew Briggs is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Propositional Poverty</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As Dave Johnson notes (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thesis XII</i>, 9.2), the late Australian philosopher David Stove calls a "gem" any attempt to derive a substantive conclusion from a tautology. Johnson alleges that I make such an error in deriving "something substantive about the contents of words or thoughts from a truism about the unavoidably intentional context of thoughts or utterances." A tautology is, of course, an analytic or a priori truth that rests upon its self-referential character ("a = a," "what will be, will be"). By contrast, my observation about the intentionality of human utterances, their rootedness in complex social and purposive behavior and thus their propensity to mean more than they say, is not a tautology. Nor, I think, is it properly dismissed as a truism. I take it to be an a posteriori fact about all (or most - perhaps some mathematical statements are exempt) significant human utterances. If I can show this then I utter no gem, precious or otherwise.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In general when I say something, the reasons behind the choice to say it (rather than something else or nothing) make non-trivial contributions to its substantive meaning. Common linguistic practice illustrates this: the question "Why do you say that?" is naturally and sensibly synonymous with "What do you mean?" Though the first sentence emphasizes reasons and motivations (intention) while the second focuses on denotation (propositional content), the two questions have similar results in conversation, since in practice the distinction is only approximate, only a matter of emphasis.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">This example may seem to rely on a culpably accidental fact about current English usage fostered by inadequate general training in logic. So to be fair, let me use Johnson's own example, the banal observation he makes that "My cat is black and white," which "appears to be entirely descriptive." Of course, in normal parlance it is indeed a simple description; I wish to show that no such description can ever be as simple as it appears or as normal parlance assumes, for each of its terms (and all of them together) insistently evoke a vast universe of meanings and (most importantly for the is-ought problem) relationships. </div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Allow me to pose only a few of the obvious questions: In what sort of community does "my cat" have meaning? Does the phrase signify a property relation (as in "my toothbrush"), a relationship ("my daughter"), or what? Is the verb an "is" of identity, of naming, of description? What is worthy of comment about the cat's coloration, as opposed to its many other features? Why are you telling us this - because your cat is missing and you hope for assistance? Because you find its coloration attractive? Such questions go on and on, of course; some of them have fairly obvious answers, while others are arcane or even obtuse. We can distinguish the sensible from the absurd so reliably in such cases (that is why we think of it as a simple description) only because the world of our experience (language, relationships, intentions) overlaps so thoroughly with the speaker's.</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">If I am correct that a selection of background interpretive assumptions of this sort underlies any and all interpretations of such a statement, then any inference in which it occurs as a premise will quite legitimately already contain normative elements sufficient to warrant a non-fallacious normative conclusion (though by custom and for good reason we are wise to spell out such elements as explicit premises). Thus the is-ought problem arises only when, instead of making statements in the sense of actually saying things to one another, we re-state or quote their mere denotative content for use in a formal exercise.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Johnson's critique of my argument relies on an attempt to maintain distance between what literary critics call content and context. He avers that the term "proposition . . . refers to the actual content of statements" when in fact he means only that it refers to their denotative content. We can only exhaustively confuse denotative with actual content when a statement is (partly) removed from the connotative and intentional context within which it functions as a statement. I say "partly" here because were we to remove a statement completely from its context – send it to Mars without a dictionary or a parachute -- it would no longer even be a statement (except from a god's-eye view, perhaps). </div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Thus content/context is a useful distinction, but it will not sustain the metaphysical weight Johnson needs it to hold, and frankly I am surprised that he insists on it - I would expect him (as a naturalistic ethicist) to welcome a solution to the is-ought problem that leaves intact the analytic usefulness of the notion of propositional content, while merely indicating its somewhat limited practical importance.</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Freedom and Self-Consciousness</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In “The Bicentennial Man” Andrew the robot says, “It seems to me that only someone who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wishes </i>for freedom can be free. I wish for freedom.” I think that this captures what it is to be free, even if one’s actions are truly guided by deterministic forces, as Andrew is by the “Three Laws of Robotics.” For instance, we human beings go about living as if we are free; we live self-consciously of ourselves as beings that make free choices about what we do. We do not go about doing things from day to day thinking of everything we do as merely actions that are just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">happening </i>due to physical causes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The self-consciousness of doing something (being self-conscious of oneself as both a body and its consciousness) presupposes that one perceives oneself as doing something freely. If one were conscious of one’s actions as being determined, one’s own self-consciousness would be radically different. We would merely feel as if we were a disconnected, bodiless consciousness observing a separate body that is doing things on its own; it would be like observing an unconscious object such as a machine. But our self-consciousness involves a perception of our own consciousness being something participating and being connected to the bodily actions as they actually happen by making choices about what the body does, even if reflection, or knowledge gathered later in retrospect, might show that this is not actually the case.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">With strong evidence pointing towards us truly being beings who are determined causally in their actions, this state of mind is the closest thing to making us free despite the implications of this evidence. Since we wish to be free we are self-conscious of ourselves as free and this is turn has an effect on the way we actually do things. Perhaps this mental state is an self-delusion. If we are truly causally determined, this state of mind still has an effect on the causal chain which causes us to act as if we are free even though we are not because it has a corresponding physical state in the brain and hence has an effect on how our body functions and how it appears to function to our consciousness. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Shane Babcock is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span> </div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-14369359413473761282012-06-08T15:30:00.000-04:002012-06-08T17:12:41.637-04:00Volume 9.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt;"> <h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 40.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 9 • Number 1 </span></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-font-family: Mistral; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Mistral; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">Copyright </span></span></i><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><i></i>December, 2001</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Gerol Petruzella </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">A Survey</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 10;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Maura Mills </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">VIVISECTION AS AN UNJUSTIFIABLE PRACTICE<span style="mso-tab-count: 10;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Todd Bowes</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">MARX AND NIETZSCHE</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">A Dialogue</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 10;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">William Taylor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ON MORAL CONSIDERATION, FUTURE POTENTIALITY, AND MOORE</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></b><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Wingdings 2"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Aristotle’s Metaphysics</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A Survey</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Gerol Petruzella</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics addresses existence in the barest, most fundamental sense: what is being? Yet his approach to the matter is closely entwined with epistemology. Aristotle recognizes the following chain: the way the world <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> affects us as we experience it, and our sensory experience forms the basis for our knowledge. This connection of world-experience-knowledge is our only available means of apprehending the world, and so Aristotle must necessarily approach his study of being through it: hence his close consideration of questions pertaining to wisdom – its sources, motivations, components, and outcomes. His entire project of discovering the conditions of existence is predicated upon a specific set of parameters concerning human wisdom: that knowledge of causes is superior to that of effects, that we are naturally constituted to desire and seek wisdom, even a normative component, namely, a tacit assumption of a correspondence between wisdom and goodness. In this sense, Aristotle’s metaphysics, unsurprisingly, cannot be neatly excised form his overall worldview.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Proceeding on the supposition that our epistemological access to the world’s existence is accurate and reliable, and that a correspondence theory of truth applies, Aristotle details more fully the core question about the nature of being. Is ‘being’ a substance or an attribute? Are there types of existence besides the physical? What is the relationship between existence and non-existence? Or between potential and actual existence? In asking these questions, Aristotle already assumes that there is something there – some world existing independently of our perceptions. He also assumes that it is meaningful to talk about existents having essential attributes, rather than treating qualities as dependent upon the fact of perception.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">What seems to me one of the most primary issues in metaphysics is determining the status of sorts of existence other than straightforward physical instantiation. Aristotle’s questions about potential/actual and being/non-being focus most exclusively on this matter. Physical being, although certainly not unproblematic, nevertheless is at least the most intuitively accessible aspect of ontology; whereas the concepts of potential and non-existence offer daunting challenges to our understanding of them, for they ask us to treat as existent (at least insofar as to consider them and their putative effects on other existent objects and on our interactions with them) objects which are entirely inaccessible through our only direct means of apprehending the world, that is, our senses. Without the objective evidence provided by sensory apprehension, the existence of such potentially existent or non-existent entities seems limited, in a sense, to the mind of the individual considering them. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">What standards do we use to determine a thing’s existence? Generally speaking, its ability to produce a distinguishable change in our senses, or its capacity to interact with and influence other objects we have accepted as existent. These criteria are unacceptably vague, however, when we try to apply them to objects whose ontological status is other than simply physically existent. Most would agree that the possibility of global nuclear winter actively influences the actions of military personnel in refraining from using nuclear weaponry. According to the above criteria, then, the existence of the potential Armageddon scenario is affirmed by the fact that it causally affects actual events. However, this seems logically suspect, especially upon consideration that the above example depends upon a conscious agent, rather than being a purely physical system. In fact, it seems that any argument, which incorporates counterfactual claims, is invariably supporting either an epistemological or an ethical claim – both areas dealing with the mind and its attributes and activities – but never a purely ontological one.</div><div align="left" class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Gerol Petruzella is a graduate of MCLA’s philosophy department and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in ancient philosophy at the University at Buffalo</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Vivisection as an Unjustifiable Practice</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Maura Mills</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">It is clear that frivolous, out-dated, and repetitive animal experimentation, in both research and pedagogical settings, is morally unjustifiable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assuming, however, the highly improbable hypothetical situation of a well-researched vivisection case that we can almost guarantee will save human lives, the question becomes more complex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No longer can we incorporate the critical arguments that the majority of animal experimentation is unnecessary, that we cannot accurately extrapolate the results of such experiments to humans, or even that vivisection often serves political and economic goals more than it does scientific ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With this hypothetical situation, all that we are permitted to consider is whether or not the potential benefits prevail over the moral arguments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Since non-human animals suffer as we do, we should be opposed to vivisection regardless of the possible beneficial consequences of such experimentation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A well-established ethical principle states that the only limit to a person’s basic rights is where that person would infringe upon the equally basic rights of others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is in harming, imprisoning, and experimenting on unwilling non-human animals that we obviously and undeniably infringe greatly upon their innate rights to satisfaction and bodily integrity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In such a case, we cannot even argue the issue of paternalism, for it is for the ultimate benefit of humans, and not the animals themselves, that we perform the painful experiments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Although a series of macabre and bizarre experiments on live and sentient non-human animals may ultimately save human lives or lead to medical breakthroughs, it is indisputable that many non-humans will suffer greatly and eventually die in the process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like us, nonhumans can suffer both physical and emotional harm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike us, they are routinely the subjects of these gruesome experiments, and are rarely given pain relievers for fear that their effects might interfere with the test results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lacking any moral justification for these practices, any benefits to humans are simply ill gotten gains. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Maura Mills is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx and Nietzsche</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A Dialogue</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Todd Bowes</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: So, Herr Nietzsche, I hear you’re working on a new book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On the Genealogy of Morality</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Interesting title.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: I thought so.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: Tell me, what is the crux of your book?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: Were it so simple that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i> explain it in but a single sentence!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Behold, I am attempting to show how a slaves’ revolt two thousand years ago changed the concept of morality for ill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is a sample passage: “The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ressentiment</i> itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ressentiment</i> of those beings who, being denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside,’ ‘other,’ ‘non-self’: and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> ‘no’ is its creative deed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This reversal of the evaluating glance -- this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inevitable</i> orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself -- is a feature of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ressentiment</i>: in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all -- its action is basically a reaction.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(1)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: Powerful stuff. I applaud your prose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still there is something I don’t understand: You are proposing that this “slave morality” is but a reaction to their masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That because they had no power, they came to associate all things that were not them -- the powerless -- that those things were bad.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: And likewise, the things that they, the slaves, were, became good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems odd to me, then, that this was all done under the assumption that the ones in power were bad to begin with, and the slaves’ revolt somehow justifies their morality: the fact that they were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">victorious</i> is proof of their right to moral ascension.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I deny this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is my claim that the masters were good because they were able to claim power and nobility for themselves, hence the triumphant “yes” to themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only natural, then, for the masters to associate all that was lowly with the slaves who served, for the slaves obviously did not achieve as much, and so were inferior.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: Strong words, Herr Nietzsche. But truthfully, can you not say that perhaps the masters were wrong in their mistreatment of the slaves?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely you would agree that slavery is wrong.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: Indeed, I am far from an advocate of slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But remember my passage: the slaves were projecting their own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">self-hatred</i> onto their aristocratic masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of reflecting that hatred back upon themselves -- much like the masters reflected the resounding “yes” onto <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">themselves</i> -- they instead came to despise the masters instead of their own lot as slaves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So this slave revolt was borne out of self-hatred projected onto someone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They shifted the tides of reasoning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the only reason it has remained so for two thousand years is because the slaves won and perpetuated their new morality!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The masters were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> doing anything wrong because it was not morally wrong for them to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To say that they were, is to admit that you think like the slaves did.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: Let me try a different approach: Suppose we are in a situation where “master morality” is the norm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now imagine a slave who works for a master, and this slave is even paid a wage for his services.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The slave knows he is a slave, even though he makes a wage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the fact that he is paid a wage has no effect on his state as a slave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, the slave is tasked to make blocks for his master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For each block he makes, he earns one copper, with which he can use to buy himself better clothes, food, and, if he saves up enough, even his freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The slave does not keep the blocks he makes, and at the end of the workday, he gets a number of coppers equal to the number of blocks he produced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is what I refer to as wage-slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The slave is alienated from his work; he has no property of his own, just coppers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He may trade the coppers for property, but if he were even a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">true</i> slave, he would not even have that -- and yet, he still would not have any of his own property.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(2)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: Since you brought up the wage-slave, let us go back to that example: the wage-slave can still buy property with the coppers he earns, yes?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: Indeed, but examine the relationship between the wage-slave and his capitalist employer: It is identical to a master and a slave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without the employer, the wage-slave cannot survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He must trade his skills and the products that result from those skills for coppers to survive, much like the slave who must make blocks under pain of death or some other grisly thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In either case, failure to comply with the master or capitalist employer results in dire consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wage-slave and the regular slave are the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He receives work to maintain existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To give away his coppers for amenities forces him to do more work to have more coppers to give away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is cyclical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In effect, since the goal of the capitalist is to make more product, the worker becomes no better than the tools used to ply his trade; he becomes a tool.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: I believe I see where you are going with this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I dislike the efforts of man going to waste.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ideas and concepts are great, whereas the actual product is merely perfunctory, and certainly not worth superceding the importance of the idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Product should always be secondary. So those who create are of supreme importance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: So then doesn’t that make the master’s enslavement of the slaves wrong?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: As I said before, Herr Marx, I do not advocate slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But understand that the slaves were making product, not actually creating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather, it was through the vision and drive of the masters that their idea, their creations, took shape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is unfortunate that many other persons had to suffer because of that vision; perhaps the slaves should have been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">celebrated</i> as means to an end, rather than to dismiss their condition as an end in itself -- but to criticize the masters for fulfilling their vision would be absurd.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: So where is the line drawn? I can understand that vision is necessary; someone must come up with an idea, but would not it be better for everyone to participate in that creation, that vision, for themselves, rather than just executing the will of others?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nietzsche: A good question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is my contention that were it possible for those who were in the position of executing the will of creators to create for themselves, they would have done so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The workers lack the drive to create; they are not prevented from creating, but do not anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So you cannot trust a majority, a community, to be all creators. Ideas require execution as well as impetus!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Marx: I see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But don’t you think everyone should be given the opportunity to be the creator?</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1">Nietzsche: Of course!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even though that sounds nice and idyllic, I do not think it is possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because slave morality has seeped into the mainstream of critical thought, all that which is low-born and common is now good, and that which is high-minded, visionary, creative, is considered other, outlandish, and insincere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the creators are not heard in their time, if even posthumously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Posthumous men -- I, for example -- are understood worse than timely ones, but heard better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More precisely: we are never understood -- hence our authority</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(3)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(1) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On the Genealogy of Morality</i>, Friedrich Nietzsche</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(2) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844</i>, Karl Marx</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(3) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twilight of the Idols</i>, Friedrich Nietzsche</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Todd Bowes is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On Moral Consideration, Future Potentiality, and Moore</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">William Taylor</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">I concur with Eric Moore’s argument for why in extreme life-or-death cases (like the limited capacity lifeboat case or the burning house case) we ought to save a human infant moral patient over a nonhuman animal moral patient (Eric Moore, “The Case for Unequal Animal Rights,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Environmental Ethics</i>, forthcoming).</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">On Moore’s view, in an extreme case we are justified in saving a human infant over a nonhuman animal out of respect for the infant’s unique capacities: since only the infant can become a psychologically sophisticated moral agent, the human is worthy of more moral consideration than the nonhuman moral patient.</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">However, many ethicists contend that what matters when speaking of a person’s morally relevant capacities is her present capacities and not her potential future capacities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These ethicists claim that we unfairly based our moral judgment on a number of future contingencies (which in no way have anything to do wit the present extreme state-of-affairs) that may never come to fruition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quite unlike how we speak of present-day comparative abilities, there is no absolute fact of the matter about the infant’s future that would justify our choosing the infant’s life over the nonhuman animal’s life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, while at first glance our reasoning seemed very appealing, it now seems at least profoundly muddled.</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">However, the reason why we find ourselves respecting the infant’s future in the first place is because her future – like yours and mine – matters fundamentally; our potential futures are substantive and inexorable components of our selves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We always act for near and far-off benefits and we rarely question these motivations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we did not act for future considerations at all, it would be difficult to act morally (and otherwise) in many respects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our notion of harm, for just one example, is inextricably linked with considerations for the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When someone dies we mourn extensively because it is an egregious harm (when it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> an egregious harm).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the harm of death is not merely a function of whatever suffering is experienced during the crucial moments of dying and how we miss the deceased individual’s existence in the present, but also of the wonders of experience and life which the deceased will miss out on and how we will continue to miss her existence.</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Moore rightly argues that when making the choice of whom to save in our extreme case, two considerably different potential futures with regard to capacity require two considerably different levels of moral consideration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of her potential for greater psychological capacities, the human infant has a more valuable future than does a nonhuman moral patient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While considerations for the future ought not to be the sole variable in determining respective levels of moral consideration, it seems clear form this discussion that such future considerations indeed ought to be an important factor when constructing our moral axioms.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">William Taylor is a student at MCLA</span></i></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-84846000692867591742012-06-08T15:25:00.001-04:002012-06-08T17:33:30.010-04:00Volume 8.2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 7pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 40pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 8 • Number 2 </span></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">December, 2000</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gerol Petruzella </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">AGENT RATIONALITY OF MEANS AND ENDS<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Kathleen Oakley</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">AGAINST SOLIPSISM<span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">THE ERROR OF COLLECTIVE VALUE LEGISLATION<span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Taylor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">THE DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE AND DISTRIBUTION OF INCENTIVE<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoBodyText3"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Agent Rationality of Means and Ends</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gerol Petruzella</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The concept of rationality is generally construed as follows: a conscious agent is rational iff s/he will consistently choose, when faced with multiple courses of action whose results entail differing outcomes, that course which maximizes the agent’s preferred outcome. The idea of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">acting</i> means causing a state of affairs to occur, particularly a state of affairs, A, which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is not</i> some other state of affairs, B, such that, at time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">t<sub>1</sub></i> [before the choice was effected], the agent could have as conceivably caused B as A. Rationality, then, is the agent’s framework for relative evaluation of different outcomes.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This conceptualization of rationality, however, is more limited than that which Aristotle proposes in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nicomachean Ethics</i>. Aristotle proposes that rationality entail a more broadly encompassing normative element, so that not only are an agent’s actions evaluated in terms of rationality, but his/her intentions are so evaluated as well. In terms of this scheme, the general idea of rationality with which this article began is insufficient, because it makes no evaluative statement about the agent’s preferred outcome, but simply leaves it as axiomatic. </span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Hume, in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Treatise of Human Nature</i>, endorses the more limited, means-oriented description of rationality: “Reasoning takes place to discover this relation [of desires to action]...But ‘tis evident...that the impulse arises not from reason, but is only directed by it.” Reason is simply a calculative tool used to form the best means to attain one’s desired ends; the ends themselves are not open to evaluation in terms of reason, but exist apart from such evaluation.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The exclusion of ends from rational evaluation, however, is not clearly justified, and has troubling ethical consequences. While Aristotle sees rationality as the evaluation of both means and ends, Hume offers no way to evaluate one’s ends, simply defining them as desired outcomes. Unfortunately, any ethical system will be severely hampered in evaluating agents’ actions if their motivations are exempt from rational judgment. It is quite easy to conceive of an agent having a strong desire to torture children, and using impeccable logic to achieve his desired ends; if one is restricted to rationally evaluating only this agent’s means of accomplishing his ends, one is forced to conclude that the agent is perfectly rational – a conclusion likely abhorrent to most. Aristotle’s inclusion of both means and ends within the scope of rational evaluation gives the necessary grounds for the conclusion that the torture-inclined individual is in some way irrational – specifically, he has an irrational end. </span></div><div align="left" class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Gerol Petruzella is a student at MCLA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Against Solipsism</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kathleen Oakley</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> I believe, against the idea of “solipsism,” that I am not the only thing in the universe. To assert that I am the only one in this world is to admit there might be someone or something else besides me. I would not have to say I am the only one if there is no one else here -- there would be no point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that I say I am the only one signifies that I am contrasting my oneness to someone or something else.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">If no others exist, I would not know that I was the only one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">In particular, I could not believe in solipsism if there were no language for me to draw upon that explains just what that belief entails. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, "language is the vehicle we use to conceptualize a thought or idea." We do not possess language skills when we are born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there is no one here to teach me how to use a language and eventually to understand what solipsism means, I could not possibly believe in it.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Some would argue that my existence could be real while the existence of everyone else is a figment of my imagination. If I exist alone, I would have no idea what another person looks, sounds, or feels like. I do not think it is possible that I could conjure up an image of a person in my mind without having some sense of what a person is. If nothing is there to begin with, it is impossible to imagine anything at all. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Kathleen Oakley is a student at MCLA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Error of Collective Value Legislation</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Shane Babcock</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Palatino; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socrates argues that Euthyphro’s claim about what is pious logically implies that that some things are both pious and impious, thus Euthyphro contradicts himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Socrates uses premises that seem true only if one reads them uncritically, yet they do imply his conclusion validly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Socrates’ evaluation is full of premises that are linguistically and conceptually problematic, the argument is truly unsound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Socrates’ argument seems to be this:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent3">P1: What is dear to the gods is pious and that which is hateful to the gods is impious.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">P2: When the gods argue about what is dear to them, what is truly dear cannot be ultimately decided upon.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">P3: The same things are both hated and loved by the gods.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">C:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Euthyphro’s earlier claim means that the same things are both pious and impious.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent2" style="text-indent: 0in;">Socrates restates Euthyphro’s original claim as his first premise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus Euthyphro’s claim is employed as part of a logical argument, which eventually shows that this claim implies the statement that the same things are both pious and impious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The statement about the gods arguing implies that the same things are hated and dear to the gods; hence there can be no answer to what is truly dear in itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, Socrates states his conclusion by correctly substituting the phrase “the same things” into Euthyphro’s original claim. In this way, Socrates shows how that conclusion was logically implied by Euthyphro’s original claim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The things that the gods love and hate in the third premise are the same things that are both pious and impious to the gods in the first premise. This is so because that which is loved by the gods is pious and that which is hated by them is impious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is on these grounds that Socrates uses substitution to state the conclusion that the same things are both pious and impious.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Overall, this argument is unsound because its validity depends on Socrates making various linguistic and conceptual errors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the third premise in which Socrates errs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Socrates said, “Then the same things are hated by the gods and loved by the gods….”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The argument can continue to proceed validly only because Socrates fails to point out that it is the same things that are loved by certain gods that are hated by other gods, not hated and loved by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the gods.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could have said that certain things are loved by Hera, Zeus, and Athena; but those same things are hated by Posiedon, Ares, and Aphrodite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the gods</i> who hate certain things and also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the gods</i> that love those same things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">certain gods </i>that hate those things and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">certain other gods</i> that love those things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course Euthyphro’s earlier statement is linguistically problematic in the same way, but the error occurs when Socrates tries to relate his erroneous claim to Euthyphro’s claim by saying that if the same things are hated and loved by the gods, then by substitution they are impious and pious to the gods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they are only pious to certain gods and impious to certain other gods, not just to the gods in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, these same things are not pious and impious.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">As Dr. Kay Mathiesen (MCLA) has pointed out, Socrates would probably respond by saying that just as spicy ingredients and sour ingredients in a soup collectively make the soup sweet and sour, god x who hates a thing and god y who loves a thing collectively as<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> gods</i> make the thing both hated and loved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the case of the soup, its objective sourness and objective sweetness is empirically viable only because both of these qualities are being collectively consumed, as sweet and sour soup, by a consumer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of the gods there is no empirical apprehension of things being collectively hated and loved, only an observation of things being hated or loved by different gods in separate instances. One never sees a thing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hated and loved</i> in-itself, only the hating or loving of a thing by a subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Saying that the same things are both hated and loved by the gods is different than saying that certain things are hated by certain gods, while other gods also love these same things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first statement supports the argument because it helps support the substitutive statement that the same things would be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">both </i>pious and impious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, that statement is conceptually wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things are not hated by the gods and loved by the gods. What is pious is based on subjectivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hera loves a thing due to her perception of it while Zeus might hate the same thing due to his own perception of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certain things are not pious and impious; they only appear that way because different gods perceive them in different ways. Euthyphro does not imply that things are both pious and impious in his original claim; he only seems to because of Socrates’ linguistically and conceptually unsound treatment of his statement. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Shane Babcock is a student at MCLA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span> </div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><u><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Difference Principle and Distribution of Incentive</span></b></u></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">William Taylor</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Theory of Justice</i>, John Rawls advocates the Difference Principle -- a normative principle of distributive justice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simply put, Rawls’ Difference Principle is this: since every person has a right to basic equality, social and economic inequalities ought to be arranged so that the greatest beneficiaries of the social and economic system are those least advantaged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Rawls, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Theory of Justice</i>, 1971, p. 307.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Current social and economic inequalities are partly a result of the phenomenon of incentive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incentive is an integral factor for almost anyone deciding whether to perform almost any task, and consequently, it is an essential part of our social ontology -- and will be in the foreseeable future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, if a correct and sufficient amount of incentive is given to a particular few to perform relatively valuable tasks in a given economy, a more productive economy overall can result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the Difference Principle renders strict equality for all in social conditions where the phenomenon of incentive does not exist, it allows for relative inequalities in conditions where the phenomenon of incentive is essential to productivity, so long as the productivity results in raising the lesser advantaged people’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolute</i> position to the highest degree possible -- up until the position cannot be raised any higher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>, “The Difference Principle.”)</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">It seems that the determination of how incentive ought to be distributed to people for undertaking relatively valuable professions in their economy -- while maintaining that the economy ought to be most beneficial to the least advantaged -- is a problematic one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">One may argue that this could be determined by simply calculating what is generally necessary and sufficient to induce enough people so that the profession is sufficiently undertaken in the economy overall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, while incentive is an integral factor for almost anyone in deciding whether to perform almost any task, it also seems that the amount of incentive that is necessary and sufficient to perform a given task varies greatly among different individuals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, it is conceivable that the actual necessary and sufficient amounts of incentive for some exceptional people to undertake this profession would be far less than what their society determines is necessary to induce enough people to undertake the profession sufficiently overall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And let us assume, for sake of argument, that the chief reason the society determines that a higher amount is needed is because a significant percentage of people within the economic niche want a comparatively gross amount of incentive to undertake the profession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case, these exceptional people would unfairly infringe on what would have otherwise been the benefits of the lesser advantaged had the incentive been distributed on the basis of what was actually necessary and sufficient incentive for them (as individuals) to undertake the profession.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">However, if a society were to distribute incentive strictly on an individual basis, it would also produce unacceptable (and absurd) results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For there would be cases where, in order to fill an economic niche, the society would be giving more incentive to those people who selfishly want more incentive to undertake the profession than the people who are immediately willing to undertake the profession and need less incentive (because they have greater interest in the profession, or greater love for humanity, or whatever).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The society in these cases would be essentially rewarding those who are less motivated and more selfish. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">I propose, instead, that the society should set uniform standards in the overall economy whereby people receive gradations of incentive in direct and equal proportion to how generally valuable and burdensome a profession is compared to those respective medians in the overall economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Factors that would determine the relative level of burden would include: amount of schooling and training that is necessary to perform the tasks within their profession, the cost of that schooling, other monies lost that would have been acquired had they not undertaken their profession, actual effort utilized in their profession, and many others as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The former two factors mentioned (especially) also seem to be expressions of the deemed value of the profession in the society’s economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actual value of a given profession to a society, though, will almost always be in continuous flux.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Distribution of incentive generally ought to (as much as possible) vary in direct and equal proportion to the variation of value of the profession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the uniform standards of distribution of incentive in this proposal would not induce enough people into a particular profession, the amount of incentive could be raised dialectically, equally proportionate to the effective value for the least advantaged if the economic niche were filled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a process, however, would not allow for the excessive, unjustified amounts of incentive that could be acquired by some in the prior two proposals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">William Taylor is a student at MCLA</span></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-69444241727785099932012-06-08T15:20:00.001-04:002012-06-08T17:33:48.910-04:00Volume 8.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: windowtext 7.5pt ridge; border-left: 7.5pt groove; border-right: 7.5pt ridge; border-top: 7.5pt groove; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding-bottom: 1pt; padding-left: 7pt; padding-right: 4pt; padding-top: 1pt;"><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 40pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 8 • Number 1</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b></h4><h4 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">September, 2000</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">DARWINIAN ENDS</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A Reply to Mathiesen</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Kelly Crosier</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">IN PRAISE OF VIRTUAL REALITY<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Ellen Kelly</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">AGAINST VIRTUAL REALITY<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Eric Moore </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">MODERATE PERFECTIONISM REFINED</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A Reply to Taylor</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Theresa Doherty </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">SECOND CHANCE<span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Todd Falkowski<span style="mso-tab-count: 11;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF SYLLOGISTIC LOGIC</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-top: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Darwinian Ends</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Reply to Mathiesen</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matt Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> In her reply to Bill Taylor's critique of Scruton, Kay Mathiesen emphasizes an important and often-neglected distinction between epistemological and ontological unpredictability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, a process can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appear</i> random, especially viewed from its midst, when in fact it is designed to produce a specific outcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will argue, however, that Taylor is essentially correct (though he may slightly overstate his case) that the indeterminacy of Darwinian evolutionary outcomes is ontological, not merely epistemological.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not Ockham's Razor alone, but the character of historical processes in finite timespans itself militates against teleological interpretation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">First to cede some ground:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the "outcome" in question can be nothing so specific as moral consciousness, intellectual ability, or social organization among <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homo Sapiens</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be too easy to show that such a particular result is radically contingent on purely accidental directions taken by the planet's history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most dramatically, a meteorite that happened to strike the Yucatan Peninsula roughly twenty-six million years ago virtually wiped out the dinosaurian land animals then dominant (their remnants seem to have evolved into birds), opening an ecological niche for mammals, who might well otherwise have remained marginal, gerbil-like creatures with tiny brains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will grant, therefore, that the outcome allegedly planned by the divine designer must be something pretty general, such as that intelligent and perhaps even language-using life of some sort would eventually develop (so that it could conceive of and praise God, or whatever).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I will further concede that there are algorithms in dialectical processes such as evolution that can tend, under certain conditions, toward increasing relative intellectual ability in some species, once some degree of intelligence has developed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, given a relatively stable environment and a long-term relationship between two species, one of which preys upon the other, selective pressure will often favor differential reproductive success for faster, cleverer individuals of both species.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the very long term, the general population of each species will tend to have sharper senses, quicker reactions, greater ability to anticipate and respond to encounters with the other, and the larger brains and more complex neurological development these enhanced abilities demand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The resulting brain capacity, which develops to cope with a particular set of conditions, becomes a general (and highly versatile) capacity that can be commandeered for entirely unrelated purposes, such as philosophy, basketball, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">etc</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this extent, then, Mathiesen (and the Pope (1)) could be right to maintain that evolution might be the process by which God intentionally created intelligent life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">However, there are many radical contingencies that might have intervened to prevent such a process from getting started, or reaching fruition once begun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will discuss one of the most crucial:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the development of multicellular life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stephen Jay Gould (2) and others have observed that our habitual designation of the epochs of life tend to be anthropocentric; by almost any measure (sheer numbers, variety, adaptability, biomass, and so forth) we are not in the age of mammals as opposed to dinosaurs, or even the age of vertebrates as opposed to insects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We live in the same age that has been dominant since the dawn of life on earth:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the age of bacteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all its vaunted complexity and variety, multicellular life is a fragile accident, restricted to a very narrow range of environmental conditions, that might well never have happened, and (geologically speaking) probably will not last very long.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Of course, if life had an unlimited span of time available to sustain this and other crucial leaps (e.g. nucleated cells, cellular specialization, sexual reproduction, and so forth), it is reasonable to presume that sooner or later, by a process of trial and error, coupled with the tendency of workable forms to self-perpetuate, intelligent life of some description would probably emerge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus if God had, as part of His design, an unlimited number of parallel or sequential universes in which to run His experiment, He could be assured of eventual success (3).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">However, if we confine ourselves to our own universe, the window of opportunity for multicellular (and eventually intelligent) life to develop is comparatively small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It cannot arise until a planet has cooled sufficiently, radiation levels dropped to manageable levels, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">etc</i>., and it must quickly develop to precarious levels of sophistication before the planet freezes, is engulfed in some stage of solar decline, or suffers some terminal accident such as collision with a comet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is at best only a few hundred million years (in the case of our own planet) during which the conditions might be right for a fortuitous concatenation of accidents to lead to beings like us -- which seems like a long time from the perspective of our lifespans but is far from the eternity God needs to know that his creation will succeed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="left" class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-style: normal;">In summary:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mathiesen contends that God, being omniscient, could predict such large-scale results as intelligent life even from a process (such as evolution) that has significant random elements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, she concludes, evolution is not inconsistent with God's ends, since it is capable of producing His "crowning…achievement of creation."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I argue, on the contrary, that the constraints of time, coupled with the radically contingent nature of the development of life (in particular the critical move to multicellular life, and other necessary and fragile developments) mean that we don't need Ockham's Razor to dispense with the teleological argument for God; a simple washcloth will do the trick (4).</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(1) In a papal encyclical in 1998, Pope John Paul attempted to end Roman Catholicism's 140-year history of opposition to evolutionary theory by contending that evolution may well have been God's method of creation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, if my argument is cogent, he fails in his effort to bring science closer to revealed religion.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(2) See, for example, Stephen Jay Gould <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Full House; the Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin</i> (Random House, 1997).</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(3) This is, of course, abstractly possible, and leaves a loophole large enough to push God through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the theoretical complexity such a hypothesis requires, in the absence of any non-theological reason for posing it, smacks of special pleading to retain God at all costs, and still fails to show what the teleological argument claims, that God intends evolution to produce intelligence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">on our own planet</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, a defense of God requiring such extreme metaphysical postulates hardly constitutes a rational argument.</span></div><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(4) I hold Dave Johnson responsible for this metaphor.</span></div><div align="left" class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Matt Silliman teaches Philosophy at MCLA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In Praise of Virtual Reality</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kelly Crosier</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: Palatino; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Virtual Reality would give people with physical disabilities the opportunity to experience sensations and explore places that are not accessible to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Virtual reality is an artificial environment created with computer hardware and software and presented to the user in such a way that it appears and feels like a real environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A physically disabled person only needs to have the goggles, which provide the 3-D imagery, earphones, and in some instances special gloves, to "enter" virtual reality. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The goggles, for example, track head and body movements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Imagine yourself in the situation of being paralyzed, unable to walk through a forest, or unable to do what able-bodied people can do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You place on your goggles, earphones, and glove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you move your eyes the goggles track the movement and respond accordingly by sending new video input.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are now in a forest with tall trees, hills, streams, and you are able to see and hear everything that goes on there. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Virtual reality can be used to create the illusion of reality, or imagined reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would the virtual experience of the simulation of walking, swimming, playing sports, and running be different than the physical experience of feeling the wind against you, the water surrounding you, or would your other senses take over?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In most cases at least two of the five senses are being used, seeing and hearing; I believe you will feel the wind and the water if you let yourself feel it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Pat Coyne suggests that the "obvious next step is virtual sex” (1).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some may also suggest that this would be an overall bad idea, but from a physically disabled person's point of view I see it differently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sex is a normal part of a human being's life, and many disabled people are not lucky enough to have a partner to help them fulfill that need.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Virtual reality may change that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe that sex is 99% what your mind makes of it, it is not just a physical action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case Immanual Kant was right when he said "The mind is itself the lawgiver to nature".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also argued that "we in fact never have knowledge of reality, but only of things as they appear to us, and that the mind itself contributes the form in which we know appearances" (2).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">With virtual reality it would appear to me that I am in the forest, give me the feeling that I am running and even the sensations of sexual activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mind can take me wherever I choose to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one can live in a virtual reality state his or her entire life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is nothing wrong with disabled people wanting to escape from their lives for a period of time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is like reading a book and picturing yourself as the characters, visualizing their experiences, or getting lost within the setting.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Some may say that virtual reality will just be bringing an escape to those who feel their lives are not as fulfilled as they could be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of facing the truth of their lives, disabled people could get lost within the virtual world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Facing reality is a very large aspect of coming to terms with a disability and accepting oneself</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(1) In R. P. Wolff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">About Philosophy</i>, p. 347.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(2) Ibid., p. 341.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Kelly Crosier is a student at MCLA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Against Virtual Reality</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ellen Kelly</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: Palatino; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I literally shudder at the image of the possible dehuman-izing repercussions that would occur if computers – machines that we as human beings have created -- become so complex that any hope or desire, whether a goal we could attain with enough determination or just a fantasy, becomes a reality just by pressing a button.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dialogue of a typical futuristic family might consist of something like this: “Honey, I will be back in a hour or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am going to Computer.Com Warehouse of Realties.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom responds, “Again Honey? but why?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Well there is a great sale on half hour sex sessions with Cindy Crawford [or any futuristic model], and the kids, well, little Timmy wants to enter the ‘Coolest Kid at School Session’ and Sarah wants to go on a date with Ira Standlif, you know the extremely wealthy boy that lives on the other side of town.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pat Coyne’s article (in R. P. Wolff, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">About Philosophy</i>) makes humans wonder if they should even bother continuing to exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is just another example of how we as people deny the realities of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We let technology take its place.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">One may as well become a solipsist because eventually everything one wanted from life could be offered from computer technology, manifesting a belief that there are not any realities in life, only one’s mere existence, nothing else warranting solid beliefs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Diversity amongst personalities would become nonexistent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If everyone in their adolescent years could have had the opportunity to be the popular student, the mainstream student, most would have opted for that popularity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Essentially, what is desired by most is attention or recognition, a desire we as humans have in common, but a desire that thankfully is not fulfilled for every adolescent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many that have attempted to be different, like the famous writers and artists of the past, would quite possibly have been satisfied in their own techno-world had that been an option for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The need for human contact would become obsolete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love, the most powerful need of all, would be replaced by an hour of sex with whomever one chooses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Safe sex essentially, but ultimately a poor substitute for real human interaction. </div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Coyne ends the article with the same question many would ask of this futuristic fantasy world becoming a reality, “After all it won’t be real, will it?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Wolff, p. 348).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ask: what will be real?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am aware there are people like myself that would refuse to succumb to the situations a computer revolution could bring such as “safe sex” in all regards (no trust or involvement needed) or becoming a phenomenal athlete by simply investing a few moments and dollars into Computer.Com of Realities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But would there be enough us that actually dared to be different?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If others are not striving to achieve something from this so called life, what is the future of humankind?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If many forget the work it takes to be emotionally involved with someone, the dedication it takes to prevail at one particular thing, the realities of life, the tears we shed because we dared to love, the determination we derived from overcoming feats, and the smiles we share because, we as human beings are the creators of those smiles, will not procreation become nonexistent, just an image on the screen?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Ellen Kelly is a student at MCLA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span> </div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Moderate Perfectionism Refined</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Reply to Taylor</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Eric Moore</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Moderate Perfectionism can be very roughly expressed as the view that persons are superior to animals because of their ability to act morally. Thus, it seems to imply that if we are faced with the unfortunate choice of saving either a person or an animal (but not both), the theory directs us to save the person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Taylor objects to this theory ("An objection to Eric Moore's 'Moderate Perfectionism'," <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thesis XII</i>, 7.3) because, as he points out, while people <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> act morally, that doesn't guarantee that they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> act morally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He asks us to compare two worlds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On world A there are animals but no people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On world B there are both animals and people, but all the people in that world kill and pollute for selfish gain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>World B may contain many people, but is certainly far <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">worse</i> than World A because the people in B are so immoral.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, mere possession of the ability to act morally does not suffice when faced with the unfortunate choice between saving a person or an animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This is a good point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should note that in my paper I did not say that any person, no matter what, should always be saved over any animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, I claimed that when faced with a choice between saving either an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">innocent</i> person or an animal, that the theory directs us to save the innocent person (1).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, Moderate Perfectionism as originally proposed would not favor World B over World A.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">However, in that paper I never explained why I favored only innocent, rather than all, moral agents over moral patients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taylor's excellent thought experiment has pointed out the need for such an explanation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My new formulation of Moderate Perfectionism directs us to save a morally decent person over an animal, but to save an animal over a morally depraved person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In what follows I motivate and provide a brief sketch of this refined theory.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">First, some background.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Following Tom Regan, I make a distinction between subjects-of-a-life and others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Individuals that possess beliefs, desires, perceptions, memories, a sense of their own future, an emotional life, preference interests, sensations of pain and pleasure—these individuals are subjects-of-a-life (SOALS (2)).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">SOALS can be divided into two main classes: those that are moral agents, and those that are moral patients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moral agents are those SOALS who can reason morally and act on those reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus we hold them morally accountable for their unconstrained actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adult humans are paradigmatic moral agents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moral patients, on the other hand, cannot reason morally or act from moral reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But since they are SOALS, they do have desires and beliefs, an emotional life, and a sense of the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Normal adult mammals, as well as young human children and some mentally incapacitated adult humans, are moral patients (3).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">I accept the Inherent Value Postulate: All SOALS possess inherent value, and each has equal inherent value to each other, whether moral agent or moral patient (4).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">So far, all I have said is consistent with Tom Regan's equal rights theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at this point I diverge from him (5).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For consider the distinction between moral agents and moral patients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The essential feature of a moral agent is her ability to engage in moral reflection that leads to moral action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it seems inconsistent with the recognition of this ability to fail to recognize that when a moral agent acts from this ability, that this affects her moral status.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the point of recognizing moral agents as distinct from moral patients is to hold them morally responsible for their actions, and we do this because we think that they are better for acting morally, worse for acting immorally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Thus, while it is appropriate to base the rights of moral patients on their inherent value, it is not appropriate to base the rights of moral agents on just their inherent value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, we can think of the inherent value of all SOALS as equal, and that in the case of moral agents, this furnishes a base line for their moral status.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the moral status of moral agents can also be affected by their moral worth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bad behavior and vicious dispositions lower moral worth, while good behavior and virtuous dispositions enhance moral worth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">So, the moral status of a person is equal to his/her inherent value plus his/her moral worth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When a person's moral worth is positive, then this will make that person's moral status greater than his/her inherent value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When a person's moral worth is negative, then this will make that person's moral status less than his/her inherent value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Therefore, when deciding between a moral agent (a person) and a moral patient (such as an animal), we must compare the moral status of the person to the inherent value of the animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the moral status of the person is higher than the inherent value of the animal, then we save the person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the moral status of the person is lower than the inherent value of the animal, then we save the animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, if the moral status of the person is equal to the inherent value of the animal, then we may flip the coin to decide which one to save.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Refined Moderate Perfectionism builds upon the insight that motivated Moderate Perfectionism in the first place—that there is a significant moral distinction between moral agents and moral patients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously much remains to be worked out, especially about what makes for moral worth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, I have now provided enough theory to show that Moderate Perfectionism does not have the defect that Taylor claimed.</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="color: black; font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(1) </span><span style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Moore, Eric, "The Case for Unequal Rights for Animals, Draft 6," page 9.</span></div><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(2) Regan, Tom, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Case for Animal Rights,</i> (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1983), page 243.</span></div><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(3) Regan, pages 151-152.</span></div><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(4) Regan, page 240.</span></div><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size: 9pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">(5) See my "Equal Rights for Animals: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thesis XII, 6.3</i>) for the reason.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif";">Eric Moore teaches philosophy at Longwood College in Farmville, VA</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">~~~</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Second Chance</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Theresa Doherty</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Every person has one event, decision, or choice in his or her life that he or she regrets; something we would change if only we could go back in time, an event that at the time seemed minuscule, maybe even easy, but now haunts us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the question remains: how many are willing to pay the price for the chance to go back and change it? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">My job is to offer people that second chance to go back in time to that one event and change it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was also my job to tell them the high price they have to pay for doing this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most people are eager at the chance to go back with the wisdom and knowledge they now have and change the past; few were willing to pay the price.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the very few who were willing to pay the price was Matthias, a 42 year old stockbroker in New York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I approached Matthias to offer him his chance to alter one event that had happened when he was just a child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Matthias had made one decision that would cost him years of guilt and pain and another her life. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">His mother had told him to watch his little sister for a few minutes while she went to say goodbye to his grandmother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Matthias was sitting in the front seat of the car while his little sister was strapped in the back in her car seat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Curiosity got the better of Matthias and he started to fiddle with the steering wheel and gadgets in the car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next he knew, the car was backing towards the cliff at the top of the driveway that dropped about twenty feet into a little stream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without thinking, he jumped out of the car, leaving his sister inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before his mom could get to the car, it went over the cliff killing his little sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For years Matthias lived with the guilt of this accident: although his mother and father had long since forgiven him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was after all only five years old and he had not intended for the accident, but Matthias had scourged himself with the memory.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When I first approached Matthias with my offer he was at home, spending one of his nightmare infested, wakeful evenings restlessly turning objects over in his hands. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I presented him with my usual offer the chance to stop the sequence before it started, but I also told him the price he would have to pay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I explained that going back to the past was not the hard part; that was actually quite simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem was coming back to the present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Changing one event in the past changes the whole present into something that is unknowable to anyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could not guarantee that by altering Matthias’ past his present would be anything that he would want to return to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could not promise that he would return to his wife and four children, to his six figure annual salary, or even if he would still be alive in the present. I could only guarantee his sister’ life on that fateful day.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The problem for Matthias was the same for everyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was more than eager for the opportunity to go back and save his sister, but he did not know if he could give himself completely to a memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wanted time to think, but time was not something I had in abundance. The best I could do was give him an hour to arrive at his decision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left Matthias feeling quite the way that I do after each offer I make, very sympathetic to the decision that he had to come to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the one confusing part of the job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did not, as some may think, feel envious of the people who were allowed this opportunity, I myself had refused it on numerous occasions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, there were events in my past I would like to change, but not knowing the repercussions of these changes always bothered me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agonized over the question of “why did these events happen.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spent most of that hour walking in the rain, contemplating these questions wondering what decision Matthias would make<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b></span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthias passed back and forth across his living room, holding a picture of his little sister.</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“What am I suppose to do, Sis? I love you and miss you so much, but I love the family I have now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I go back I can save you, but at the same time I could be killing all of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t mean to hurt you, it was an accident, doing this to them would be intentional.”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthias stopped pacing and sat down, beginning to sob, as his wife entered the room.</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“Why are you crying?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are you having the nightmares again?”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“There is something I have to tell you”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthias said, launching into a narrative of the situation</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“What do you think I should do?”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">“I think you already know what you have to do.”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Matthias’ wife rose, walking across the room, where she picked up a book, laying it in front of Matthias.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quietly, the woman left her husband, an air of understanding clinging to her proud shoulders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He lowered his tortured gaze to the page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fresh tears coursed down his already dampened cheeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Matthias nodded.</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When I returned to Matthias’s house he was ready to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had made his decision; he was willing to give himself to the past, regardless of the new future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was just about to ask him how he had made this decision when I looked down and saw a Bible opened to John, sitting on his desk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was turned to the passage, which says, “man knows no greater love than this to lay down his life for his friends”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked up at Matthias, but did not say a word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had discovered the one thing I may have been missing all along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For that one brief moment when he was back in that car and did not touch that shift, he knew his sister was alive, and for the first time since the accident he, too, would be truly alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knew he would not cause the pain of his sister’s death for his parents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For that one brief moment, he would be truly happy and, no matter what the present had waiting for him, it would no longer have guilt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The nightmares would finally stop.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Theresa Doherty is a student at MCLA</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span> </div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;"> </div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On the Universality of Syllogistic Logic</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Todd Falkowski</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><h1 style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;">‡</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> The idea of a syllogism is universal and will be found in any intellectual tradition presenting itself as logical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buddhism is such a tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></h1><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The idea of an inference is universal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the syllogism is merely a tool used to explain and communicate inferences, it too is universal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A simple inference is a cognitive process where the mind indirectly connects two particular ideas through a similar middle one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An inference is part of nature and occurs only in the mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simply described, the syllogism is an explanatory device (outside of the mind) that contains three terms. These three terms are the ones that occur in the respective inference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The syllogism came into existence, because it was unavoidably the best form to simplify and explain inferences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The Aristotelian syllogism contains (at least) three propositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the propositions must be a conclusion while the others are premises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The syllogism contains three terms; major, minor and middle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The major term, by definition, is the predicate of the conclusion, and the minor term is the subject of the conclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The middle term, which provides middle ground between the two premises, is the one that occurs in each premise and does not occur in the conclusion” (Hurley, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Concise Introduction to Logic,</i> p. 253).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The syllogism deduces particular ideas from general ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">All humans (major term) have thumbs (middle term).</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">No dogs (minor term) have thumbs (middle term).</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Therefore, no dogs (minor term) are humans (major term). </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The Buddhist syllogism, likewise, contains three interdependent terms in a series of two propositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One proposition expresses a general rule and the other applies that rule to a particular instance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The conclusion of a Buddhist syllogism is not explicitly stated since the minor premise (the proposition that applies the general rule) assumes it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Stcherbatsky writes: “Whatsoever is produced at will is impermanent, as, e.g., a jar etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such are the sounds of speech.”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">The preceding Buddhist syllogism first states a general rule (major premise) and then applies that rule to a particular idea (minor premise).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The minor premise presupposes the conclusion, that sounds of speech are impermanent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The syllogism contained three terms: impermanence (major term), sounds of speech (minor term) and things produced at will (middle term). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result the Buddhist syllogism can be reformed to fit the Aristotelian (categorical) syllogism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">All impermanent things are produced at will.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">All sounds of speech are produced at will.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">All sounds of speech are impermanent things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Although the Buddhist and Aristotelian syllogisms differ in form, they both accomplish the same goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both syllogisms explain inferences to other humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both times three terms were involved; two particulars being connected by a middle one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At root, syllogisms are universal; they are the simplest means to communicate an inference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Some logicians feel that only the inference is universal and existing syllogistic forms are not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If inferences are universal then the structures used to communicate them also must be universal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two syllogisms discussed in this essay are similar at base and only contain superficial differences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both syllogisms accomplish the exact same task; they communicate the process whereby the mind indirectly connects two particular ideas through a similar middle one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason syllogisms outwardly appear different can be attributed to cultural and linguistic differences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Todd Falkowski is a student at MCLA</span></i></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-22807994002356907662012-06-07T13:05:00.000-04:002012-06-15T14:02:51.959-04:00Volume 7.3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt;"><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 40pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 7 • Number 3 </span></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"> April, 2000</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Inside this Issue: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Kay Mathiesen</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">GOD’S PURPOSES AND EVOLUTION</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">A Reply to Taylor </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Jennifer Boyle</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Taylor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">AN OBJECTION TO ERIC MOORE’S “MODERATE PERFECTIONISM” </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ellen Machala</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">THE SELF </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Yujin Nagasawa</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">HAS PHYSICALISM REALLY WON AGAINST DUALISM? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">God’s Purposes and Evolution</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A Reply to Taylor</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Kay Mathiesen</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> In "Darwinian Evolution and Roger Scruton's Teleological Argument for the Existence of God" (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thesis XII</i>, Volume 7.2) William Taylor argues that Scruton's teleological argument for the existence of God "encounters significant problems in light of Darwinian Evolution"(4). Taylor is surely right that evolution makes such teleological arguments less compelling, since, as Taylor points out, teleological arguments, "fail to explain anything that evolutionary theory does not explain more simply"(5). However, Taylor makes a further claim that I wish to dispute.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Taylor claims that evolution serves to refute teleological arguments, because evolution is inconsistent with the teleology of God's creative acts. Taylor claims that evolution is "in its very nature at odds with any conceivable teleological argument" (4). According to the teleological argument, God creates the universe consistent with a plan and human beings are the "crowning teleological achievement of creation" (4), but evolution produces its outcomes (including human beings) through a "dialectical process," which appears completely unplanned.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Taylor's argument, however, confuses the method by which something is produced with the product itself. Nothing prohibits an agent from producing an outcome via a process, which appears random and unplanned. This is clear once we distinguish epistemological from ontological randomness. Something may appear random to us, because we cannot predict how it will turn out. For instance, according to Chaos Theory, some deterministic (i.e., non-random) systems produce unpredictable results. Due to the complexity of the physical system, there is no faster way to figure out what will happen than to run a simulation. However, the fact that we cannot predict what will occur, does not mean that what occurs is not completely determined by the laws of nature and the initial conditions. Epistemological unpredictability does not imply ontological randomness. And God does not have our epistemological limitations. God, with an infinitely powerful mind and infinite time on His hands, can run an infinite number of simulations and choose that universe (with a set of laws and initial conditions) that produces the results that He prefers. Thus, God could "design" the world by picking the laws of nature, setting the initial conditions and then letting the process spin out in God's chosen -- but apparently unplanned -- way. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Of course, Quantum Mechanics indicates that the universe is not even ontologically deterministic. Even so, God could still use such a system to produce His desired results. Even truly random processes can have certain predictable outcomes. We can predict, for instance, that as we continue to toss a coin the number of heads will approach 50 percent. So, while (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">contra</i> Einstein) God may "play dice with the universe," He could still predict the large-scale results.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In conclusion, I have not provided reasons to accept the teleological argument for the existence of God. Rather, I have merely shown that the teleological argument is consistent with the theory of evolution. However, as Taylor points out, once one accepts the theory of evolution, Ockam's Razor may require that we dispense with the hypothesis of a creator God. </span></div><div class="MsoHeading8"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Kay Mathiesen teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Against Capital Punishment</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Jennifer Boyle</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;">“The question with which we must deal in not whether a substantial proportion of American citizens would today, if polled, opine that capital punishment is barbarously cruel, but whether they would find it to be so in light of all information presently available.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;"> -- Justice Thurgood Marshall</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> As we approach the dawn of a new millennium, the United States is one of a handful of countries which still executes people. Since 1976, more than 580 people have been executed in the United States, over 50% of those since 1992. President Clinton’s 1994 anti crime bill added 58 more crimes that are punishable by death and his “Anti-Terrorism” bill limits the number of federal appeals for death row prisoners to just one within one year of conviction. Both Republicans and Democrats have created a “get tough on crime” climate which will mean more executions. It is time for concerned Americans and advocates of human rights to take a stand against the barbaric and ineffectual practice of state ordered murder. It is in the best interest of the American people to oppose the death penalty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Even in today’s booming economy, taxes are still a major issue with Americans. Americans would like to pay less in state and federal taxes. A comprehensive study in North Carolina found that the death penalty costs the state $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life. On a national basis, these figures translate to an extra cost of over $900 million dollars spent since 1976 on the death penalty. Therefore, it would benefit Americans fiscally if the death penalty were abolished.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: list .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">No American wants the death of an innocent person on his or her conscience. Since 1973, 83 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. There have also been 23 cases since 1900 where innocent people were executed. Due to advances in DNA research and other technology, the number of innocent defendants released from death row has been steadily increasing over recent years. Between 1973 and 1993, there was an average of 2.5 innocent defendants released. Since then, the average has increased to 4.6 per year. Therefore, it would benefit all Americans, including the innocent Americans currently serving time on death row, if the death penalty were abolished.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">With these compelling arguments in mind, it is difficult to understand why anyone would support the death penalty. There are some, however, who would offer up the death penalty as the government’s “last best” deterrent to violent crime. The argument that capital punishment is a deterrent does not stand up under statistical investigation. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the South repeatedly has the highest murder rate. In 1997 it was the only region with a murder rate above that of the national rate. The South accounts for 80% of all executions. The Northeast, which has less than 1% of all executions in the U.S., has the lowest murder rate. A recent study of the deterrence value of the death penalty focused on whether the death penalty deterred the murder of police officers. The researchers surveyed a thirteen-year period of police homicides. The study concluded “we find no consistent evidence that capital punishment influenced police killings during the 1976-1989 period…[P]olice do not appear to have been afforded an added measure of protection against homicide by capital punishment” (Bailey and Peterson, 53, 71).</span></div><div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="tab-stops: list 40.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="tab-stops: list 40.5pt;">As further evidence against the “deterrence theory,” some studies indicate that the death penalty actually increases the number of murders. A recent study in California found that the average annual increase in homicides was twice as high during years in which the death penalty was carried out than in years in which no one was executed. Another study of executions in New York from 1907 to 1963 found that on average, homicides increased in the month following an execution.</div><div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="tab-stops: list 40.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="tab-stops: list 40.5pt;">In summary, the American citizen does not benefit from, and should no longer tolerate, the outrageous costs, moral malignancy, and societal brutalization that result from capital punishment.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Notes</span></b></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;">W. Bailey and R. Peterson, “Murder, Capital Punishment, and Deterrence: A Review of the Evidence and and Examination of Police Killings.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of Social Issues</i>, 1994.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Jennifer Boyle is a student at MCLA</span></div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">An Objection to Eric Moore’s “Moderate Perfectionism”</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Taylor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> In his “The Case for Unequal Animal Rights” (unpublished manuscript; but see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thesis XII</i>, volume 7.2), Dr. Moore advocates the position he terms “moderate perfectionism,” a view that “recognizes the very real differences between humans and other animals, [while] it also recognizes the inherent value in animals, [and thus,] it does not sanction the terrible treatment of animals that is carried on today” (18). According to his view, these “very real differences” between humans and animals are “[humans’] ability to act morally—their ability to make the world a better place” (11). For this reason, according to his view, in all exceptional life-or-death cases the moral agent’s life is preferred over the animal moral patient’s life. I will attempt to demonstrate that this reason for preferring moral agents in all such cases is problematic, and thus, moderate perfectionism must be rejected.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Consider Moore’s assumption that humans have an ability to make the world a better place. Note that Moore never clearly defines in his paper what is a “better place,” or exactly how human actions can make the world a “better place;” he merely claims that this is a product of humankind’s moral agency. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Consider now the contrasting scenarios of a world consisting only of animal moral patients and devoid of moral agents, as it was before the onset of humankind on Earth, and a world consisting of both animal moral patients and moral agents, as Earth is now -- a world consisting of humans who, despite their unique ability to make moral decisions, frequently kill and pollute (among many other such acts that our moral agency would roundly regard as immoral) for selfish, desire-based gain. Is it plausible that we could argue that the latter world is “better”? It seems instead -- particularly in light of the current status of the world in which we live -- that we could fairly decide that the former world is, in fact, “better.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">It could be argued, though, that this illustration is not an entirely fair objection to Moore’s view. After all, each individual moral agent does not necessarily contribute to these atrocities. Nonetheless, this illustration shows that moral agents are very capable of making <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">immoral</i> decisions, too, and this is a capacity that can clearly make the world a worse place. Moore, however, does not acknowledge this in his paper. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">I imagine that a proponent of moderate perfectionism would argue that a moral agent would make the world a better place because his/her beneficial actions are morally motivated, whereas a moral patient’s beneficial actions for the world would be done for reasons that are purely instinctual. And so, since the former is purposeful, it makes the world “better.” It seems, however, that in virtually all significant cases (that is, where humans are utilizing this unique ability), morally motivated beneficial actions are not really making the world better at all, but instead are, at best, attempting to stop, with varying success, the immoral actions of fellow humans that are making the world worse. </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Furthermore, it seems that we cannot know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a priori</i> that saving the moral agent in all exceptional life or death cases would even have this optimal result. Probably the closest we could come to knowing that saving the moral agent would have this optimal result is to know his/her prior (presumably good) moral track record, but this is by no means a fool-proof method. It seems then that saving the human moral agent in all exceptional life-or-death cases will actually make the world worse-off.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">William Taylor is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="FootnoteText1" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The Self</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ellen Machala</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> David Hume states in “Personal Identity” that the self is just the series of our experiences united by the imagination. According to Hume, humans “are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions” (122). If people look within, they find that all of their decisions, opinions, and actions are based on their perceptions or the information they have previously gathered. Personal identity is the quality or result of these perceptions. I submit that in spite of a possible objection, Hume’s argument is a reasonable explanation of personal identity.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">According to an objection by Thomas Reid, Hume is ignoring the fact that in order to have thoughts and perceptions there must be an actual thinker doing the thinking. Since we also consist of material substance, this individual mind is who we are. We exist as a unique thinker and not as an abstract bundle of thoughts. Without a mind we would have no perceptions.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In response to this objection, I claim that one cannot find when we view ourselves as the thinker. Since all humans can think, then they are just a large group of thinkers. There is no individuality in this case. The way you determine one person’s thinking from another’s is by the individual sets of perceptions. For example, there may be two different people in the same classroom. Both will hear the same lecture and take the same notes. Suppose that these two people have very similar personalities and past lives and seem to agree on everything. It is still impossible for them to have the same perceptions because of the fact that they are sitting in different locations in the room. One person may see the blackboard at a different angle or one may be experiencing a glare from the window. Two people cannot take up the same space at the same time. Thus, they will have different perceptions. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Furthermore, I believe that Hume’s explanation of identity is reasonable because he leaves open the possibility that there may be no constant and unchanging identity of a person. We perceive new things at every moment of every day. If a person is continuously adding new perceptions to his/her identity, then how can the person with the new perception be identical to the person without that new perception? When people change so does their identity. Why, then, do we say that Ellen now is that same as Ellen ten years ago? Although the identity changes, the person still has something that separates here from the others. I am a very different person than I was ten years ago. I have more knowledge, I act and think differently. However, the change in my identity is so gradual that no one considers me to be a completely different entity than I was ten years ago. We unite the changes in our imagination just as we unite our perceptions. What is needed is a new definition of identity that is not restricted by the idea that identity must be a rigid quality that we carry with us everywhere. Instead, identity must be viewed as the collective and changing perceptions relative to one particular entity.</span></div><div class="MsoHeading8"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Ellen Machala is a student at MCLA</span></div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Has Physicalism Really Won Against Dualism?</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Yujin Nagasawa</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Philosophers of mind often claim to have overcome Cartesian mind-body dualism. Most subscribe to some kind of physicalism which is consistent with cognitive science and neurophysiology. Even well-known critics of physicalism (like Frank Jackson) now reject dualism. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Cartesian dualism asserts that the mental is not the same as the physical. According to Leibniz's law, if x is identical to y, every property that belongs to x also belongs to y. Descartes maintains that, since we can doubt the existence of our body while we cannot doubt the existence of our mind or soul, the mental and the physical must be entirely distinct. But anti-dualists show the inconsistency of Cartesian dualism by a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reductio ad absurdum</i>. Suppose, as Descartes says, that we consist of two totally different substances; the physical and the mental. Our bodies are physical, but essentially we are mental beings. If this assumption were true, there would be many inexplicable results: How can my mind control the movement of my arms? How can a physical injury give me pain? It is obvious that two fundamentally different substances cannot causally interact with each other without any connection. Therefore, physicalists say, Cartesian dualism is incorrect. The problem of mental causation is the biggest flaw in Cartesian dualism. No matter how well dualists can explain mental phenomena, dualism cannot be regarded as a well-formed theory of the mind without a successful resolution of this problem.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">However, physicalists inherit a different problem: How do our brains give rise to qualitative aspects of our sensations? Mental phenomena are so different from physical phenomena that it seems impossible to explain mental experiences solely in terms of the neural activities in our brain. Descartes’ dualism is definitely obsolete, but if physicalists cannot explain the problem of the qualitative aspect of our mental experiences -- which seems to be as intractable as the problem of mental causation -- it is far from true that they have solved the mind-body problem or that they have totally won against Cartesian dualism.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Yujin Nagasawa is a student at SUNY-Stony Brook</span></i></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-74884376075554324022012-06-07T13:03:00.000-04:002012-06-15T14:07:44.111-04:00Volume 7.2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt;"><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 40pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Review</span></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 7 • Number 2 </span></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"> 1999</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Inside this Issue: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Evelyn B. Pluhar, Kelli Newby, Kathleen O’Malley, David Pixley, and Lori Carrier</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">ETHICS AND ANIMALS</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Exchange</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Hickey</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ANIMAL RIGHTS AND RED HERRING </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Taylor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">DARWIAN EVOLUTION AND ROGER SCRUTON’S TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gerol C. Petruzella</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">SOCIALISM AND THE MEANINGFULNESS OF LIFE </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Anthony D. Annichiarico</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 7.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">THE PERSISTENCE OF SOCIAL DARWINISM </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Ethics and Animals</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A Philosophical Exchange</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Editor’s note: The following is an exchange between several MCLA honors students (from this fall’s seminar on Ethics and Animals) and Evelyn B. Pluhar, author of the highly acclaimed book </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Beyond Prejudice: The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Special thanks to Professor Pluhar for her time and thoughtfulness.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Question: "In your 1997 response to MCLA Honors students, you suggested that you could, in extreme, life-or-death situations, rationally choose to save the life of a gorilla (you mentioned Koko) over an evil person like Adolf Hitler. Might we also rationally choose to save a particularly good human (say, Mother Teresa) over the gorilla? Is so, does this imply a kind of moral perfectionism that grants special status to human persons?" </span></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Reply to Students</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Evelyn B. Pluhar</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the course of my 1997 reply to the question, "How ought an impartial human decision-maker (with no special acquired moral or legal duties) act when faced with saving the life of but one of two equally morally significant beings, the one human, the other nonhuman?," I said that I would be inclined to save Koko the gorilla rather than rescue Adolf Hitler. I chose to say “inclined” because, as I said, I have not and had not addressed the question of whether deliberate serious evil without remorse lessens a moral agent's moral significance. Let us see how answering this question would affect the Mother Teresa (MT)-gorilla dilemma.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Suppose the answer to the question is "yes." In that case, we would have no reason to prefer MT over the gorilla. I have argued that beings such as MT and the gorilla enter life with full moral significance because each cares about what would happen to her. The gorilla is, as far as we know, incapable of moral agency; thus she is an innocent, and as such is incapable of forfeiting any measure of moral significance. From what we know of MT's life, she too had not forfeited any of her initial moral significance. If deliberate, serious evil by an unrepentant moral agent lessens her moral significance later on – if MT had been Clyde's Bonnie instead of her saintly self – it would be defensible to give the nod to the gorilla. As it happens, however, this is not the case. (Note that the forfeiture hypothesis is not a variety of moral perfectionism: one may lose a measure of moral significance and perhaps also regain it, but one cannot increase it beyond it's initial full measure.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Now suppose the answer to the question is "no," that we cannot make a good case for the forfeiture hypothesis. A being with full moral significance would retain it regardless of her actions and attitudes toward those actions. In that case, once again we must grant the gorilla and MT an equal chance at rescue, since they would be equally morally significant. (Alas, in that case we would then be required to regard Adolf and Koko as equally deserving of rescue!) Thus, in either case the conscious good MT has done would not justify saving her over the gorilla. Moral theories other than the one I have defended would resolve the dilemma differently. A consequentialist could argue that the greater happiness resulting from MT's continuing good works would mandate her rescue, but I have argued that consequentialism is a mistaken moral theory. Non-consequentialists who would save her on the ground that her goodness makes her more deserving of rescue would indeed be moral perfectionists. I have argued that this view is also unjustified.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The identical rescue dilemma could be posed if we replaced the gorilla with a human at the same mental level – e.g., a child or a human who will never be capable of moral agency. I would answer in the same way. Moral agents are not justified in favoring full persons over those who are not, be the latter human or nonhuman. In short, MT and the gorilla each have full moral significance. An impartial moral agent who can rescue but one of them should (very quickly!) flip that coin!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Evelyn B. Pluhar teaches philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, Fayette Campus</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="FootnoteText1" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Kelli Newby</span></b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Professor Pluhar suggests that humans must always remain impartial moral agents, especially in extreme situations, such as the one posed to her by the 1997 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Animal and Ethics</i> course. While Pluhar does admit that she would save a drowning human child over a drowning cat, her answer is reluctant: “When fairness and emotions are at odds, the winner is not automatically the justified winner.” This time, when questioned about whether she would choose a particularly good person over a gorilla, she responds that one must flip a coin. Each possesses full moral status and “…moral agents are not justified in favoring full persons over those whoa re not.” Pluhar’s concern with equality seems to ignore the fact that humans are animals, and that animals have survival instincts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Darwin’s evolutionary thought caused a great stir by emphasizing the animality of humans. Most people are no longer offended by the thought of being descended from a “monkey.” Many, like Evelyn Pluhar, now argue there is no distinction between humans and animals in terms of basic moral rights. However, we can still make distinctions in moral situations. At what point, for example, does a human cease to be an animal and start to become an “impartial moral agent?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">How many people would honestly choose saving the life of a gorilla over the life of Mother Theresa? Beyond carefully worded arguments and stipulations surrounding hypothetical situations, is there something else? Article after article in Peter Singer’s recent book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Great Ape Project</i>, underscores the continuity between humans and the other great apes. If we are so similar, why is following an instinct – to save one’s own species – a terrible or unjust decision?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Purely emotional reactions should not reign over all situations. Humans are blessed with the gift of reason, but that does not totally counteract that we are, above all, just animals. Letting emotion “break the tie” of reason is not wrong. An ape that let emotion reign triumphant in his or her decision would not be accused of ignoring justice; and are we not only a fraction of a gene away from being chimpanzees? We should listen to that gut impulse we have to save the human, and we should not feel that there is something wrong with our decision. </span></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><div class="MsoHeading8" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Kathleen O’Malley</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Professor Pluhar’s further elaboration on her response to the 1997 Honors students only strengthens her case for “flipping the proverbial coin.” When deciding to save the life of one of two “maximally morally significant” beings, whether they are human or nonhuman, flipping a coin (or doing something along the same idea of fairness) is the only reasonable way to give both beings an equal opportunity to survive.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The key word in this response is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">maximum</i>. If Mother Teresa and the gorilla in our hypothetical life-saving situation have done nothing to reduce their maximal moral value, such as “an evil person like Adolf Hitler has,” then they are still equally morally significant beings. Their value can decrease but not increase. Good deeds, like those of Mother Teresa, cannot increase maximal moral value because it is already at the maximum. Mother Teresa may be a candidate for sainthood in some of our eyes; but in an extreme, life-or-death situation here on earth, she is no more valuable than a gorilla or any other maximally morally significant being. She is an equal, and her chance of surviving such a hypothetical situation rests solely on the result of that flipped coin.</span></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">David Pixley</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Flipping a coin is a correct response to our narrowly defined, extreme situation. However, flipping a coin is only morally permissible when there are no morally important considerations, or when the morally important considerations are equal. The toughest decision is ironically made easier in the hardest of all possible situations because the impartial decision-maker only has to concentrate on the level of fairness used in the decision process and not on moral correctness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Professor Pluhar writes in her book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beyond Prejudice</i>, that “[w]hen two people are drowning and only one can be saved, third parties are morally permitted to rescue those to whom they feel a stronger emotional tie” (p. 286). In this situation, does morally permitted mean the same thing as morally correct? As a potential lifesaver, I would prefer to be morally correct rather than just morally permitted to act in a certain way. In Pluhar’s book, breaking a tie by appeal to emotions is morally permissible. In answering our question, flipping a coin is fair. Are these two positions equally justifiable? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In my opinion, Pluhar’s position would have to imply that a fair, morally permissible, and justifiable decision is also maximally morally correct. However, if we suppose that the two decisions above are not equally justifiable, then it seems to follow that one decision is more morally correct than the other. This, in turn, would imply that there could be morally significant reasons to allow your initial intuition to save the human baby to be more morally correct than flipping a coin, which is permissible and fair, but, for some, intuitively wrong.</span></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Lori Carrier</span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In her reply to our question, Evelyn Pluhar does not directly answer whether she believes that doing deliberate serious evil without remorse lessens a moral agent’s significance. Instead, she answers the question in two ways; one saying that it does lessen the agent’s significance and one saying that it does not.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the case where the evil effects the significance of a moral agent, Pluhar answers that there would be no reason to prefer the exceptionally good human being because she and the nonhuman animal enter life with full moral significance, and although one can lose moral significance, one cannot gain it. This, however, is false. If by doing evil, one can lose moral significance, it follows that by doing good one can gain it. The nonhuman animal and the human being both begin life as moral patients. They have equal moral significance, but where the human being has the potential for good and evil, the nonhuman animal does not. Therefore, a human being can either gain or lose moral significance while a nonhuman animal’s significance remains steady. Given Pluhar’s statement that the nonhuman animal and the human have equal full moral significance because both care what happens to him them, then one cannot lose moral significance by doing evil. The evil human, we assume, still cares what happens to him or her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the case where one’s moral significance is not forfeited by evil-doing, Pluhar says that we must toss the proverbial coin again. This answer is unsatisfactory, even, it seems, to Pluhar, who answered the original question by invoking a choice between Hitler and Koko.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kelli Newby, Kathleen O’Malley, David Pixley, and Lori Carrier are students in an honors seminar on Ethics and Animals at MCLA</span></i></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Animal Rights and Red Herring</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Hickey</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Libertarian author L. Neil Smith’s editorial, “Animals Are Property,” published in the March 1996 issue of “The Libertarian Enterprise,” attacks the idea of animals rights, claiming that it is a device used to forward the “obsolete and discredited” socialist agenda. Smith claims that to advocate for any environmental issue, such as animal rights, is “to abuse individualism and capitalism.” Smith uses the concept of inflation as a metaphor: just like inflation dilutes the value of currency, “moral inflation,” as he calls it, dilutes human liberty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In fact, Smith argues that the proponents of animal rights infringe upon human rights; they limit the human right to do what ever we desire to do to “unclaimed property” – that is, animals. This limitation strangles capitalism, therefore, promoting the animal rights advocates’ socialist agenda. The argument is obviously fallacious.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In leading us away from one issue (animal rights) to attack a totally unrelated subject (socialism) Smith commits a textbook red herring fallacy. Smith does not appear to have a valid argument against animal rights; he simply offers this thought on the moral status of animals: They are “groceries.” Like many opponents of animal rights, Smith simply misses the point of the claim that some non-human animals are entitled to basic moral consideration</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">William Hickey is a student at MCLA</span></i></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Darwinian Evolution and Roger Scruton’s Teleological Argument for the Existence of God</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">William Taylor</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> As is inevitably the case with all such arguments, Scruton’s teleological argument for the existence of God – his argument from purpose or design (goal-seeking) – encounters significant problems in light of Darwinian evolution, and its implications for how the world is. This is because we must distinguish between the fact of evolution and Creationism fables and their false implications. Though Scruton acknowledges the difficulty that arises because of evolutionary theory (which he, too, regards as factual), it seems, as I will depict in the paragraphs that follow, that he is guilty of having conceptions of Darwinian evolution that are decidedly inaccurate. He is then guilty of using this erroneous conception of evolutionary theory to strengthen his argument.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Scruton first constructs a premise for the teleological argument:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The world exhibits an order that is (a) good and (b) the kind of order that manifests design. Are either of these true? We do not know. Sometimes the world seems good, harmonious, beautiful, and full of signs of benevolent power. But when the bombs rain down, and the death squads force the doors, this impression is apt to disappear (p. 131).</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Scruton then contemplates natural theologian William Paley’s famous claim that the presumed design of unmolested nature (that is, “escaped from the world of men”) is analogous to the nature of a perfect watch which we come across ticking in the grass at our feet. Then the question that follows is “how can we doubt the existence of the watchmaker”? Scruton dismisses this famous claim as illusion, and this is so, he says, because of evolutionary theory:</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The theory of evolution shows how the appearance of design – design more intricate and wonderful than any we could ourselves encompass – may occur in things that were not designed at all, but which came slowly into being, through process of random change and disaster (p. 132). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It would seem that, in light of this account of evolution, Scruton himself would be able to answer the question of whether the world exhibits an<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> order</i> that is both good and of such a kind that deliberately manifests design. Although in nature there is competition and struggle for existence among individuals and species, there also exists in nature instinctual altruistic cooperation within and between individuals and species that supports and sustains them. Darwinian evolution in this regard is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disorder</i> that is neither good nor evil in any conceivable sense that we use these terms. Though this disorder that we exist in came into being primarily because of the mechanisms of natural selection, this mechanism is merely a product of incremental modification over generations of a species.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">If Scruton accurately understood these concepts of Darwinian evolution, he would not need to contemplate such a question regarding these two issues. Scruton ignores this, however, and instead argues:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It [evolutionary theory] does not refute the [teleological] argument. There is no reason why God should not choose this way – the way of blind evolution – in order to achieve his inscrutable purpose. Moreover, there is another and more remarkable design in nature: the design of consciousness. Is it not wonderful of facts, that the world <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knows</i> itself in us? How could<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>there be consciousness of reality, if consciousness were not the cause of all? …[w]herever we turn the world yields to our inquiries; its order and system are through and through scrutable… (p. 132).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Supposing that we exist as apart of God’s design, this presumed design – no matter how “inscrutable” --must be seeking some sort of goal, or else it is not a teleological argument. “Blind evolution,” as Scruton calls it, grows dialectically rather than being systematically designed, and it is itself in no sense aimed at a final goal, and so it is in its very nature at odds with any conceivable teleological argument. It is also important to mention that most gods (particularly in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim traditions) – in relation to evolution – regard humans as the crowning, teleological achievement of creation. Darwinian evolution, on the other hand, dictates that a species is successful in terms of its differential reproductive success, and, in this way, the human species is, in contrast, relatively unsuccessful when compared to many other species.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As Scruton points out, the fact that we somehow initially became conscious – like the fact that we became beings that we are, even despite our rather humble, slimy starting point – is, indeed, remarkable, and is not something that evolution – much less any other theory – has entirely explained. But our knowledge and consciousness that we have, too, seemed to evolve over time in the same way that we have come into being over time. And it that seems how we have come into being has a direct influence on our consciousness and knowledge. Scruton, however, neither accounts for or even acknowledges this. Though it is, indeed, amazing that we can know anything at all about the world, this, too, seems to be a contingency of evolutionary processes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Since we are contemplating the existence of God in this argument, and since a God is presumably all-powerful, we could not entirely disprove that God is actually seeking some goal through evolution. However, Scruton does not give any substantive reasons for thinking that this is so. His teleological argument is not an argument at all, but rather it is merely a fantastical speculation that fails to explain anything that evolutionary theory does not explain more </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">simply.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">References</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Scruton, R<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">., Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey</i>, Chapter 11: “God,” p. 121-139, “The Teleological Argument,” p. 131-134, Penguin Books, New York, NY, 1994.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;">Darwin, C., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Origin of Species</i>, Bantam Books, New York, NY.</span></div><div class="MsoHeading8"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">William Taylor is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Socialism and the Meaningfulness of Life</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Gerol C. Petruzella</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Marx’s conception of the meaningfulness of human life constitutes the essence of his</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">philosophical theory. Socialism is the realization of human nature, the final actualization of his potential as embodied in our “species-being” – the potential for conscious regulation of one’s own plans and actions. It is this concept of autonomous choice in terms of which Marx defines the intrinsic value of the human condition. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Socialist theory is both formal and normative; that is, it explains what constitutes the good, and it also supplies some guidelines for achieving this good. It derives much of its teleological character from its dialectical roots in Hegel, taking as a metaphysical base the existence of some final end or goal. This end, namely, individual and collective autonomy, is identified early in Marx’s writing [Tucker, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marx-Engels Reader</i>, 75 et seq.] and continues as a central theme both in his critique of capitalism’s exploitation and in his development of socialism: it is because capitalism denies the full autonomous expression of human nature that it is exploitative and thus to be rejected, and it is because socialism fully embodies the goal of self-determination that Marx so wholeheartedly supports it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It can be objected, however, that Marx, in his development of socialist theory, commits the naturalistic fallacy, arguing from the very existence of circumstances to the ethical value of those circumstances. For, although it may be true that human nature is best described with Marx as a non-static association of changing proclivities; and even though it may be that our species-being does not realize its potential except through the full expression which socialism affords it; nevertheless, these facts, by themselves, can say nothing about whether they ought to be pursued as choice-worthy goals. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This objection can be suitably answered within the context of the Aristotelian conception of nature which, it seems, Marx shares to a degree. The purpose of a thing’s nature is to further that thing’s goal, or good; when that thing fulfills its nature, it necessarily achieves the good. Thus, the free development of species-being within a socialist system is, in itself, desirable, for it necessarily furthers the final good. </span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Gerol C. Petruzella is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">The Persistence of Social Darwinism</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Anthony D. Annichiarico</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> In Man Versus the State, Herbert Spencer argues fervently that principles of biological evolution should be applied to human society. This is the common misinterpretation of Darwinism aptly called Social Darwinism. By borrowing a few easily recognizable features of the scientific notion of evolution, Social Darwinists attempt to rationalize objectively a system of subjugation and exploitation. Spencer used this theory to justify his condemnation of Britain’s lower classes, referring to them as “good-for-nothings” who should be allowed to perish in squalor.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">If this phenomenon is examined closely, it becomes apparent that Social Darwinism is alive and well in America today. Throughout our history, every so-called advance of Democracy has been tainted by a legacy of brutality. It is obvious that every expansion of territory in the United States was occasioned by the same ethnocentric, racist rhetoric that Spencer espoused. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Instead of denouncing this as a misuse of scientific theory, Darwin stated that “there is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the character of the people, are the results of natural selection” (Descent of Man, p. 179), showing that Darwin himself was not entirely without guilt in promulgating the racist fantasies of the power-elite. </span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">However brutal, such expansion is necessary to further capitalist enterprise, and the needs of the powerful are reflected in Social Darwinism’s underlying principle: those who own and control the means of production will use every tool they can to convince the masses that what they are doing is not only justifiable, but in accordance with natural law.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">This is one “misinterpretation” of Darwin that permeates every facet of our society, including a neo-liberal foreign policy that makes the whole globe susceptible to our idea of “natural selection,” however misguided or immoral that idea may be.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. </span></div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Anthony D. Annichiarico is a student at MCLA</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3"><br />
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</div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-44022594169281058222012-06-07T13:00:00.001-04:002012-06-15T13:53:37.991-04:00Volume 7.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt;"> <h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 40.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Review</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 7 • Number 1 </span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Todd Bowes</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">DO ABSTRACT ENTITIES EXIST?<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Judith A. Rowe</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">IS WILE E. COYOTE A BAD INFLUENCE ON CHILDREN?<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Michael P. Rosenberg</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">NAGEL’S LAST WORD<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Carol A. Duda</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ON FREE WILL<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Christina Durkee</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ANTHROPOMORPHIZING AND EMPATHY<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Do Abstract Entities Exist?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Todd Bowes</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Abstract entities exist as communicative ideas inherent in the non-abstract entities to which they refer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to prove this, or at least provide plausible reasons for it, I will examine theories of nominalism, Platonism, and immanent form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nominalism states that abstract entities such as ideas do not exist except as vocalizations, and that everything in physical reality is a particular, therefore saying that the only things that exist are physical particulars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This counters the Platonist theory that abstract entities (the forms) exist in a realm of their own, separate from particulars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, such a criticism begs the question:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it claims that Platonism is wrong because the forms do not exist as physical particulars; but this alone does not prove that there are no abstract entities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More to the point, nominalism is flawed in that if physical objects lacked any connecting generality, it would be impossible to speak meaningfully of any sort of identity or relation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if we express abstract entities as vocalizations, at least some of them are vocalizations <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> actual properties of particulars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently physical objects require abstract entities.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">However, this does not make Platonism true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, Platonism may merely appeal to ignorance in positing a superior "realm" of intellectable abstract entities. Aristotle’s theory of immanent form seems more credible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this view abstract entities exist, but not separate from objects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are, on this view, natural aspects of the objects themselves, aspects that make it possible for us to communicate about them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that there are abstract entities associated with<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>physical particulars does not eliminate the particularity of their existence which nominalism takes as essential (and even the idea of particularity is an abstract entity!). Our vocalization of abstract entities, then, are inter-subjectively convenient marks for real features abstracted from the world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Abstract entities are not, therefore, physical things, nor do they exist in a separate realm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the claim that abstract entities are an integral part of every particular object seems more plausible than either denying abstract entities altogether, or giving them a transcendent room of their own.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">While it is plausible that the names given to properties associated with physical objects is entirely performed by humans, the fact that those properties exist in the first place seems to come from a source outside of human manipulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inborn abstract properties of physical objects will always remain regardless of the abstract terms and definitions applied to them by humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, this idea still does not give any more substance to either nominalism or Platonism, since the inborn abstract entities exist within our perception (i.e.: we know they are there) and exist in our realm and not in another.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Todd Bowes is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="FootnoteText1" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Is Wile E. Coyote a Bad Influence on Children?</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Judith A. Rowe</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Violence in cartoons teaches children aggressive behavior and desensitizes them to acts of violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Children watch and understand television in different ways, depending on the length of their attention span, the way in which they process information, the amount of mental effort they invest, and their own life experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certain plot elements in portrayals of violence are considered high risk for children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These elements include characterizations in which the perpetrator is attractive because viewers may identify with such a character, showing violence as being justified, going unpunished, and having minimal consequences to the victim.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Cartoon violence permeates children's programming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Violence toward animals is rampant in Saturday morning children's programs, where more than one-half of the animals depicted suffer overt physical violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These violence-saturated portrayals are not only dangerous to animals, they are also misleading and detrimental to humane attitudes in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most cartoons are constructed with vivid production features, which greatly increases children's predisposition to violence.</span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Researchers have determined the following ways in which a violent cartoon program may impact young viewers:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can encourage children to learn aggressive behavior and attitudes; it can cultivate fearful and pessimistic attitudes in children about the non-television world; and, it can desensitize children to real-world and fantasy violence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to researcher Dr. George Gerbner, many studies have concluded that after watching violence, children are more aggressive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, children who watch violent cartoons are more likely to think of the world as a violent and dangerous place.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It is society's and parents' responsibility to teach children the vast difference between Wile E. Coyote blowing himself up in a Looney Tune and what the real world experiences when violence occurs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Parents should explain that these characters are drawn and not a character in a costume.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Society may not be able to stop the violence in cartoons and on television, but it can stop the effects of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Even in cartoon violence, we see victims that really don't die," writes clinical psychologist Evelyn Kohan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But people do die when they're shot with guns, and people really do die when people hurt them in violent ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our children have to know that."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It is certainly true that cartoon violence does not account for all the causes of children's aggression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is also true that some children are a great deal more likely to be affected by television violence than others, and it is these children who are likely to be potentially more aggressive anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the effect of cartoon and television violence is to make these “at-risk" children even more aggressive than they would otherwise be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And although the group especially at risk might be a minority of viewers, they are likely to be the majority of aggressors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This fact makes them, and the violent content of television, worthy of our attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Higher priority must be given to achieving a more realistic and positive representation of animals on television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such reform would be a progressive step toward stemming society's 'culture of violence' and its desensitization to the suffering of others.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Judith A. Rowe is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Nagel’s Last Word</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Michael P. Rosenberg</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Thomas Nagel's attack on subjectivism is rooted in his view that objective truth is something that cannot be doubted. There are certain elements rooted in logic and language which cannot be escaped -- such as logical truths, and mathematics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He describes language not as a contingent process, but as logic itself, or a system of concepts to which any language-user must conform. He also claims that language is not thought, but rather is an essential tool of it, and consequentially, logic is a linguistic tool we use to describe our thoughts and engage critically ourselves and others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As Nagel suggests, when you offer a criticism of someone, what you have offered is an external and a seemingly non-universal point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this reason, we are inclined to believe that this view, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</i> view, constitutes your own opinion of this other person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this, one could conclude that some of our moral, political, and cultural convictions are merely subjective.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">However, this view of subjectivism breaks down as we take into account the notion of self-awareness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pure externality evaporates when we pose the question, “what are we relying on in ourselves to form that view?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nagel claims that these “subjective" convictions are rooted in an inescapable objectivity – inescapable precisely because we cannot understand thought from the outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The very concept of subjectivity demands an objective framework in which the subject is located and the special perspective is described.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So your "subjective criticism" of the person was in fact based on premises rooted in objective reason. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Nagel does not deny a system of conventions, nor does he deny that grammar and punctuation require conformity to the linguistic community in an objective sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What he does claim is that the validity of those thoughts, those inescapable thoughts that language enables us to express, has its basis in those particular conventions and usages. What is meant by criticism is rooted in convention, while the thought that inspired the premises of the critical sentences is inescapably grounded in objective reason.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The last word in the debate must lie in some unqualified thoughts about how things are, and such thoughts cannot be regarded as mere "psychological dispositions."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The subjectivist gives the last word to justifications, which end in language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nagel gives the last word to the justifications themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The justifications are involved in the recognitions which subordinate them, and are implicated in the process of creating such justifications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, Nagel gives the last word to objective reason, since it is required to substantiate any subjective thoughts at all.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Michael P. Rosenberg is a student at Brandeis University</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">On Free Will</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Carol A. Duda</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> We are free to choose regarding things over which we have control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, we are able to think independently and to perform some acts absent the control of universal forces.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">If humans are predetermined to act as a result of a cause, this cause lifts and erases all sense of responsibility, morality, and ethics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blaming our actions on a previous cause can be used as an excuse for inappropriate behavior, laziness, crime, or countless other forms of anti-social actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the words of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, “if the complete concept of any being is known and was chosen for existence, then is such a being free in any sense?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If not, then what nonsense is made of the idea of morality or of sin?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Leibniz defines freedom as something that is not predictable in the same way as, for example, the combination of numbers is predictable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no universal-physical truth governing human action:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The will has the power to suspend its action with respect to the physical sequence of efficient causes -- but also even with respect to what would otherwise be seen as a decisive final cause.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, if by individual free choice we mean individual action that cannot be known in advance by even an infinitely subtle application of the laws of physics, chemistry or biology, then we have free choice in that sense as well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The materialist Thomas Hobbes objects, however, contending that everything is simply a complicated assortment of moving physical atoms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He believes the universe is so structured that everything that happens is the result of some prior cause: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in this sense we are not free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hobbes also argues that all things, including thought, arise out of the motion of atoms which obey the universal law of physics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He therefore denies the existence of choice, freedom, or free will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Hobbes, free will is only an illusion brought on by processes such as reasoning and deliberating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because we are aware of our deliberations, he contends, we merely believe we are making choices that are not the result of any kind of cause.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">But consider Immanuel Kant’s view that reality is divisible into two separate spheres – a sphere of appearance which contains all that can be known or experienced, and a sphere of independent reality about which we do not and cannot have knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kant allows, therefore, for the possibility of freedom outside the world of experience and scientific causality within this sphere of independent reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can still maintain that minds are the source of action, not anyone or anything else.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Carol A. Duda is a student at Southern Vermont College and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Anthropomorphizing and Empathy</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Christina Durkee</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> The relationship between people and their pets never ceases to be amazing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can be as profound and complex as any that arise between humans, yet bridging the distance of species adds a fascinating challenge and depth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is remarkable to think about how these intense bonds between humans and animals have been forming for millennia and still retain an air of mystery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How is it that despite all of their differences, animals and humans can form such deep, emotional bonds?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I propose that people need to find commonalties with animals in order to establish a deep, emotional relationship with them, and they do this by identifying animals' behaviors with emotions or motivations to which they can relate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As the word “relationship” indicates, in order to form an emotional bond, a human needs to be able to relate to the other human or animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, in order to empathize, people need to be able to discern commonalties, to find some sort of common ground or shared realm of experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This means that establishing a bond with another, for humans, requires the recognition or identification of something in common between the two parties.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This search for common qualities is apparent in the interaction between people and their pets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One manner in which people recognize traits in animals is by attributing emotions to behaviors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a person observing a pet who responds aggressively to a favorite toy that has become stuck under the couch may comment, “My, aren’t we grumpy today!” thereby attributing an emotional state to the animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This by no means denies the presence of emotion in the animal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Attribution is, by definition, inferring the causes of behavior; therefore, attribution does not necessitate anthropomorphism because the causes inferred <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">may be</i> the true origins of the behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, inferring the cause of behavior to be a recognizable emotional state allows the human to establish a commonality between him/herself and the animal.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Another way in which people establish a connection, or common ground, with their pets is by attributing a human motivation (other than emotion) to the animal’s actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when a pet is charging after another pet and making threatening noises, a person may explain the behavior in this manner, “He is just getting revenge because she beat up on him yesterday.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This interpretation attributes revenge, a human motivation, to the animal's behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether or not this is the true motivation for the action has comparatively little significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While consistent misinterpretation of behavior (for example, that the motivation was the pet’s evil nature rather than revenge) may lead to a future weakening of the relationship by undermining its foundation, it will not hinder its creation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During the formative process, however, it serves as another point of reference to which the person can relate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">One possible objection is exemplified by human interactions with wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In dealing with wolves, people enter into the hierarchical social structure established by the wolves, and it is their behavior in relation to the pack that determines their rank within the society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the interpretation of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human’s</i> behavior that conforms to the ideals held by the wolves, rather than vice versa as demonstrated above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Superficially, this example seems to oppose the theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response to this suggestion, however, one must consider the process that is occurring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the wolves’ perspective, the human displays expected behavior to which the wolves can relate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is possible that they too are using a similar method to provide the foundation necessary to establish an emotional bond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is important to note, though, is that as this socialization process takes place, common behaviors and experiences are also being established from the human’s perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This means that the interactions are creating the required human foundation for a relationship, thereby supporting rather than contradicting the theory.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">While bridging the distance between species may appear a daunting task, humans and animals take the challenge and triumph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we have seen, the process of identifying animals' behaviors with emotions or motivations to which people can relate allows humans to form the connections that foster the deep, emotional bonds we witness between people and their pets.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"> <div class="MsoHeading8" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Christina Durkee is a student at MCLA</span></div></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-50198785040628896262012-06-07T12:00:00.001-04:002012-06-15T14:17:26.637-04:00Volume 6.3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt;"> <h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Newsletter</span></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 6 • Number 3 </span></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-font-family: Mistral; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Mistral; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> 1999</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Sonya M. Boesse</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">ANSELM’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Eric Moore</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ANIMALS</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Mike Rosenberg<span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">REPRESENTATIVE REALISM AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL SKEPTICISM</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">A Dialogue</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 10;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Anselm’s Ontological Argument</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sonya M. Boesse</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Anselm of Canterbury undertakes the twofold task of demonstrating the existence of God and demonstrating certain truths regarding God’s attributes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In carrying out this task, he has recourse to a single consideration, namely, that God is something than which nothing greater can be conceived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will argue that, although Anselm’s argument may seem sound, it in fact commits the fallacy of begging the question.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Anselm’s argument, in brief, is:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God is the greatest conceivable being (I will call this GCB for short).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is greater to exist than to not exist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: .25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, God exists (necessarily).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Anselm evidently offers the first premise as a definition, which he takes to be self-evident. He reaches the conclusion by a simple process:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if we try to imagine a GCB which does not exist, then obviously we are not thinking of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> GCB, because a GCB that did not exist would lack some conceivable greatness (in this case, existence).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As Kant observed, a basic problem with this argument is simply grammatical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A normal declarative sentence consists of a subject, a verb, and an object or predicate. The last line of the argument, “God exists” does not meet these requirements. God is the subject, and the word “exists” is simply another way of expressing the verb to be, which is not a predicate, but a copula.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Existence is thus misused to mean a quality of God, and leaves the sentence unfinished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The obvious question in response to the statement “God is” is “God is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i>?” -- for the sentence lacks a proper predicate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In addition to (and perhaps underlying) this problem is another error:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the argument commits a fallacy of presumption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It begs the question by assuming without adequate support that the first premise is true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After reading the first premise the reader should ask, “How do we know that God is the GCB?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Usually, in committing the fallacy of begging the question, the arguer is unable to supply an answer to this question because the key premise is merely stipulative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this argument the concept of the GCB, which evidently contains the conclusion, would be in question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The arguer appears to have made a deductively valid argument because the premise supports the conclusion, but it does so only by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">assuming</i> it. The argument is circular, hence fallacious.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Anselm might reply by trying to restate the conclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He may supply the missing predicate(s) by saying he means that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, etc.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this attempt to finish the sentence simply unpacks the first premise, and merely underscores the fact that the argument begs the question.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Sonya M. Boesse is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="FootnoteText1" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Equal Rights for Animals</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Eric Moore</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Both Tom Regan and Evelyn B. Pluhar endorse the view that animals<sup>1</sup> have rights equal to human rights; for example, the right to life, the right to self-defense, the right to non-interference, and so on.<sup>2</sup><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shall show that this view has unacceptable consequences, and so must be rejected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The objection that I will give is based on an objection that Regan himself considers and rejects, so it will be worthwhile to review that objection and Regan's response before giving my strengthened version.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The objection that Regan considers is that of conflicting rights between predators and prey (284), and what follows is a reconstruction of that argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assume that all animals and humans have equal rights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, since both sheep and wolves have rights, wolves violate sheep's rights when they hunt and kill them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, sheep have a right to self-defense, and can use whatever means available, even if that requires harming the wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately, sheep do not know self-defense, so typically are killed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But suppose a human (a moral agent) learns about one of these hunts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the sheep are innocent, and they are threatened, and the wolves violate their rights, the human is morally obligated to intervene.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The principle in operation here is this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moral agents have a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prima</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">facie</i> duty to intervene when an innocent animal's rights are being violated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, if a human sees a sheep being hunted by a wolf, or indeed just about any prey being hunted by any predator, that human has a duty to intervene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But clearly this is absurd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no such duty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even worse, since wolves have rights, and saving the sheep would harm the wolf (who cannot become a vegetarian as we humans can), if we were to interfere and help the sheep, we would violate the wolf's right not to be harmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, if animals have rights, then whether we interfere or not in hunting situations we act unjustly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, it is absurd to attribute rights to animals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Regan would claim that that this objection "is open to the very charge of absurdity it levels against attributing rights to animals" (285).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem is that this argument overlooks a crucial fact:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wolves are not moral agents, so therefore they cannot have duties to anyone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In particular, wolves have no duties toward sheep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the wolves have no duties to the sheep, they cannot violate the sheep's rights. Therefore, we have no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prima</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">facie</i> duty to interfere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No rights are being violated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wolf may hunt the sheep and we act justly when we do not interfere.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I think that this reply is highly unsatisfactory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It grants entirely too much to the wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It follows from Regan's reasoning that not only do the sheep have no rights against the wolves, but that the wolves have rights against us not to interfere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We humans are moral agents, and so we do have duties, and in particular, the duty not to harm other animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it would harm the wolves to interfere with their hunt (and Regan seems to grant this), then not only is there no obligation to help the sheep, there is a positive obligation to refrain from helping the sheep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This seems wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the following case is much worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose that instead of sheep, the wolves are hunting a couple of hapless hikers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the sheep, suppose that these hikers are not equipped to scare off the wolves or defend themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They will be killed unless we intervene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we follow Regan's reasoning not only do we have no duty to intervene, but we have a duty to refrain from intervening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We must let the hikers be killed or we will violate the rights of the wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is so because even though the hikers are people, that does not matter in this case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wolves have no duties to the hikers because the wolves are not moral agents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, if we were to intervene, we would not be acting justly, because we would be harming the wolves, and they have a right not to be harmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is clearly absurd.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Regan could respond in the following way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could claim that it is not true that we have a duty to refrain from interfering with the wolves, only a duty to refrain from harming them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we wished, we could scare off the hunting wolves and prevent them from killing the sheep or the hikers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, if we followed the wolves around and constantly interfered with their attempts at hunting, this would harm them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But just the one time would not, because there is no reason to think that the wolves would starve if they did not make this particular kill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This response is still unsatisfactory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For one thing, it leaves it open to us to refrain from interfering with the hapless hikers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that has been shown is that we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">may</i> interfere, not that we must.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this still seems too weak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, if it turns out that we can save the hikers only by harming the wolves, say by shooting them, then we would be prohibited from doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hikers could harm the wolves because the hikers have the right of self-defense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we have a duty to refrain from harming the wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor would we circumvent this problem if we gave the hikers our guns so that they could shoot the wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We would clearly still have violated our duty to the wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this is not good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not only do we have a right to shoot the wolves; we have a duty to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rights of the wolves are not equal to the rights of the hikers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It might be thought that the concept of allowable harm to innocent threats saves Regan's view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose a young child picks up a loaded gun and starts firing it at us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have the right of self-defense, even if that requires us to harm seriously or kill the child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, we must try every other option that we can reasonably try, but if all else fails, we are permitted to kill the child to save ourselves, even though the child is innocent (293).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly with the wolves:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they are an innocent threat, but we have the right to self-defense, even if it requires harming them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">This will not do, for Regan discusses this example as a threat to us, and that is fundamentally different from the case of the hapless hikers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that case, only the hikers are threatened, not us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We would not be harmed if the hikers were killed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, note that Regan's justification of harm to innocent threats is one of self-defense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He writes, "...since we are innocent of any relevant wrongdoing, since we are seriously threatened by the gun-wielding child ...it cannot be wrong to do what will harm the child..." (293).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The equal rights advocate could bite the bullet and grant that there is a duty to let the hikers be killed by the wolves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, it is not clear to me that either Regan or Pluhar can consistently take this stance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason is their response to the lifeboat case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider a lifeboat with five beings, four humans and one large dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose that the lifeboat will sink and all five will die unless one of the five is thrown overboard (to certain death).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regan clearly argues, and Pluhar seems to believe, that it is right to throw the dog overboard.<sup>3</sup><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since neither is willing to bite the bullet in this case, I do not see how either could consistently argue that it is our duty to let the hiker die in the wolf case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">So any right that would require us to save the hikers would, when equally applied to animals, require us to save the sheep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, any right that would allow the wolves to kill the sheep would, when equally applied to people, allow the wolves to kill the hikers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, the attribution of equal rights to all animals entails unacceptable consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either we have conflicting duties that allow no just solution in cases involving predators and prey, or even worse, we end up with the wrong duties (the duty to let the wolves kill the hikers).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only way to resolve this dilemma is to give up </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">the equal rights view.<sup>4</sup></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Notes</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;"><sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">1</span></sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> If not all animals, at least all mammals over one year in age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This stipulation has no effect on the rest of the paper.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;"><sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">2</span></sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Tom Regan, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Case for Animal Rights</i>, Berkeley:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The University of California Press, 1983.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Evelyn B. Pluhar, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beyond Prejudice, The Moral Significance of Human and Nonhuman Animals</i>, Durham:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Duke University Press,1995.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;"><sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">3</span></sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Regan argues that death for the dog is less of a loss than death for any of the humans (324).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pluhar recognizes the underlying perfectionism of Regan's view and so rejects his reasons (291) but only claims that, "If we do throw the dog out of the boat, it should be for reasons other than his inability to do calculus" (295).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;"><sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">4</span></sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> Nothing I have said here should be taken as an argument against attributing any rights at all toward animals, or as an argument against the highly plausible claim that we have some direct duties to animals.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Eric Moore teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Representative Realism and Epistemological Skepticism</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Dialogue</span></i></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Mike Rosenberg</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> (Epistemological Skeptic):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What exactly is this “Representative Realism” you speak of?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">(Representative Realist):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will be glad to explain:<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>representative realism is the view that the mind does not provide direct access to reality, but rather represents it much as a photograph does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The objects that presumably exist in the world outside of ourselves (the “real stuff”) are connected to us through our senses. We are similar to a camera in this sense:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we get a very good idea of what the external world is, because our eyes see it and capture it, and our brain “develops the film” into an image we can recognize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This image <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">represents</i> the real, although it is not ‘the real’ in itself. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">ES:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see, very intriguing. Let me get this straight however; You claim that we cannot have direct access to reality, but we can gain a concept of the “external world” through our perception of it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">RR:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When there is intersubjective agreement about our experience of an object, we then have reason to assume it exists outside of any particular mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do not claim that our senses could not deceive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My claim is only that we cannot have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">direct</i> knowledge of an object which does exist outside of us, either because of an underlying feature of human knowers which forbids it; or because we would need to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be</i> the object in order to eliminate the gap between the “knower” and the “known.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ES:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the sake of argument, I will grant that there is a world outside of mind that is not entirely of our creation. Moreover, I’ll indulge your “representative realism” by granting that we know only through representations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, since you cannot compare objects directly with concepts, how can you be sure which objects correspond to which concepts (or that there is any kind of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>correspondence)?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">RR:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is easily explained. There is a necessary relationship between the concept and the object to which the concept refers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The string which attaches the two, the relationship, which you and I both are capable of knowing when we identify everyday things, is a capability we all share and almost take for granted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we experience an object and gain an impression of it, we create a concept and a label for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, when we first see a car, we retain in our mind the concept of it, so the next time we see the car, we are able to identify it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The relationship between the object and the concept is not a loose one, or else our mind would not function in the efficient way that it does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We might think the car is a house, or even a horse, or a wheelbarrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This does not happen, however, because the concept exists in our brain – and we know which objects correspond to which concepts, because of the innate reciprocity of the relationship. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ES:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so, there still is this gap – the gap between the concept and the object. Even if your views were correct, there still would exist this gap, am I correct?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">RR:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ES:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, therefore, since there is this gap between the knower, and the “objects” that the knower claims to perceive, you can hardly be certain of the “real.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, have you ever walked down the road, glanced across the street, and thought that for sure you saw a close friend, but as you took a closer look and approached the person, you noticed that the person was not your friend, but just a look-alike? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">RR:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, of course. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ES:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I’m sure there have been many times when you thought you saw someone or something, maybe after a hard day at work or being very tired, and at second glance noticed that you were just “seeing things;” that nothing was there at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In these cases, what are these representations corresponding to?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we gain our concepts of the real through visual representations of it, but at times such as those I have just mentioned the representations in fact represented nothing real at all, how can you ever trust your senses?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far, I find three major faults in your view:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(1) it is possible for us to misperceive objects in the world, (2) our senses are susceptible to illusions, and (3) it is unclear how much epistemological value perceptions have, or to what extent, if at all, belief should be rooted in that which we perceive. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">RR:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I concede that illusions and error are possible. But should we take such exceptional cases as determinative or normative?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We surely both agree that we are actually perceiving this table before us and not some illusion. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ES:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll grant that. But consider the chair against the wall at the end of the room. How can you be certain, epistemically, that your mental representation actually corresponds to the chair itself, since you concede that you only know the chair through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your </i>representation of it? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">RR:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can check the accuracy of my representation quite simply by asking others to describe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their </i>experiences and representations of the same chair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If their uses for it and descriptions of it fit my image well, I have at least some independent confirmation that I am correctly representing the chair. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">ES:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You seem to be a very trusting person!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are you sure you can trust you neighbor’s experiences and representations, and the congruency of their representation with yours?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">RR:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no problem with trusting my peers because I recognize that knowing is a discursive process, which does involve trust, as well one’s own sensory perception, and systematic investigation – not direct knowing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also recognize the epistemological fallibility in trust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, to arrive at knowledge, you need to trust your senses, and other people’s senses as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You will then at least have an idea that the object in the world outside of you is representing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">something </i>that is corresponding to the epistemic concepts of more than one person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this sense, although we may not have direct knowledge of the object, we know our representation of it checks out, because of agreement with other’s experiences.*</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">*Thanks to Matt Silliman and Eric Moore for comments on earlier drafts of this dialogue. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mike Rosenberg is a student at MCLA and President of the Philosophy Society</span></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-20945355414080193572012-06-07T11:55:00.000-04:002012-06-15T14:23:59.912-04:00Volume 6.2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt;"><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: normal;">A Philosophical Newsletter</span></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt; font-weight: normal;">Volume 6 • Number 2</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8pt;"> </span></b></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"> 1998</span><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></u></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span></u></h4><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16pt;">Inside this Issue: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Pat Blackman </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">NATIVE AMERICANS, MASCOTS, AND RACISM </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Cindy Wright</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">WHITE LIES – RED FLAGS </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Christopher Gutt</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">FRIENDSHIP: A Dialogue </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">SPECIAL TOPIC</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">General Education</span></i></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Joseph J. Weiner</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">GENERAL EDUCATION AND </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">CONVERGENCE </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Katherine Jassen</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">LEGITIMATE EXPECTATIONS OF GENERAL EDUCATION </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Gary Burchard and Janice Stefane</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">GENERAL EDUCATION: A Dialogue </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Tracy Fraser</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">GENERAL EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">Maude Mikulewicz</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;">GENERAL EDUCATION AT MCLA </span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Native Americans, Mascots, and Racism</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Pat Blackman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> Americans should work to eliminate the use of Native American mascots, team names, and symbols in sports. Native Americans have testified repeatedly to the negative impact of such images on their communities. They are caricatures based on inherently racist stereotypes and assumptions, and if focused on any other ethnic group, would not be tolerated by most Americans. These images and symbols function as unconscious propaganda and do not honor or ennoble Indians. They operate as part of our racial ideology and they help conceal the continuing genocide of indigenous peoples.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The fact alone that high profile sports events involving teams with names like “Redskins,” “Indians,” and “Braves” attract Native American demonstrations does not necessarily argue for an immediate change in the way we name and represent sports teams. However, it should spur Americans to consider this issue seriously. When a group in our society consistently agitates to raise awareness about a perceived injustice, it behooves society at large to listen and take note. We should not ignore the voice of Native people who continue to call our attention to this issue as part of a greater continuing injustice.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Indeed, when we truly listen, we find the clear cause of their anger. This practice reduces an entire race of people to the level of cartoon caricatures, side by side with “Cowboys” and “Pirates.” One can also view the Indian in American sports as equivalent to an animal, like the lions, tigers, and bison so prevalent among mascots and team names. And as Ward Churchill points out, one need only substitute a pejorative for African-Americans in place of “Redskins,” accompanied by appropriate visual stereotypes for the team icon, to make more clear the true racism involved in this practice (see Churchill, pp. 65-72). Imagine the public reaction to such a team.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But the issue does not stop with racism alone. These images are consistent with hundreds of years of distorted depictions of Native Americans, beginning at least with the earliest American literature. When seen in this light, the Indian is, for example, a dispensable part of the hostile world of nature, or at best a noble savage in need of culture and civilization. This we know, for all Indians have war bonnets and use tomahawks to scalp their enemies.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Perhaps most importantly, these images today convince us that all Indians are gone, things of the past. They effectively erase current Native American struggles to protect their lands and religious traditions, both of which are guaranteed security by the Constitution yet nevertheless are the targets of manifold groups, from huge coal companies to the ‘shamans’ of the New Age movement. Indeed, the depiction of Indians in American sports seems innocuous compared to these greater evils.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But it is precisely the use of such images that helps banish the real problems of Native Americans to invisibility. People who are not real cannot have real problems. Ward Churchill points out that the Nazi Julius Streicher was hung at Nuremburg in 1946, not for killing Jews, but for publishing racist editorials and cartoons which helped create the climate in Germany that allowed genocide (Churchill, pp. 73-87).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In much the same way, racist caricatures in American sports help create the climate that allows the continuing genocide of Native Americans. (A little research will reveal the propriety of the word “genocide.” One might begin with the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” available [online] at <a href="http://www.hrweb.org/%20legal/genocide.html">http://www.hrweb.org/ legal/genocide.html</a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5277093716109348436&postID=2094535541408019357&from=pencil" name="_Hlt437421351"></a>; see also, Churchill, pp. 11-63.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Three major objections are often raised together in response to these arguments. Weaker cultures have always been conquered by stronger ones in world history, so we should not concern ourselves with the protests of Native Americans. In addition, the use of Indian names and images in American sports is an honor to Native peoples, not a form of racism. Finally, sports mascots and team names represent big money for many of those involved, and thus we cannot afford to eliminate the offending elements.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The first argument, aphoristic as it might seem, does not address the fact that we all have a choice, here and now, to discontinue this process. To continue racist practices simply because our society has always been the “conqueror” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vis a vis</i> Native Americans is a morally untenable position.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The second argument demonstrates an arrogant disregard for the desires of Native Americans. As Glenn T. Morris suggests, one cannot pretend to bestow honors when the “honoree” sees them as insults (Churchill, p. 65).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">The final objection is perhaps the most powerful because it appeals to the American wallet. But simply put, economic gain cannot be a justification for the continuation of racist practice. Furthermore, while sports fans no doubt enjoy their teams’ mascots and traditions, it is dubious to suggest they would lose long term interest in their favorite sport or team because of a name change. One goes to a baseball game primarily to watch baseball and have a good time, not specifically to chop the air and dress up like an Indian. But even if this is not the case, the risk of lower income to institutions or sports franchises is justified in achieving the end of this racist practice in American sports, which is so dangerous to Native peoples.</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="FootnoteText1" style="text-align: center;">References</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><span style="font-size: 9pt;">Churchill, Ward. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Indians Are Us?</i> (Monroe: Common Courage Press, 1994)</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Pat Blackman is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">White Lies – Red Flags</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Cindy Wright</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">‡</span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The quandary facing the country today created by the President’s sexual misconduct has many loyalties divided, and many individuals confused. The President’s evasive elucidation has psychologically affected the country as individuals struggle to understand why lies are suddenly acceptable.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In an attempt to comprehend the seriousness of this issue, one must first ask why someone would place him or herself in such a precarious position. Individuals who believe their lies are justified base their presentation on self-serving venality. The liar views the deception through jaded eyes, believing the lie to be a necessary evil. Ironically, we have learned that many times deceit for personal gain masquerades as patriotic concern.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">As political leaders grow accustomed to making such excuses they become apathetic, eventually believing that lying is acceptable, especially when the liar convinces him- or herself that people will be better off in the long run: “Either I lie or this will happen,” is a false dichotomy at best. What begins as one lie escalates into many, and deceptive maneuvers become necessary to keep the corruption from surfacing. Once public servants lose their bearings in this way, all the lame deceptions of today’s Sexgate - the phone calls, the tapes, the elaborate cover-ups, the bribing of witnesses to make them lie, the televised pleas for trust -- become possible. </span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Claims that others have acted similarly in the past are no consolation. We must guard against <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tu quoque</i> arguments and casual inferences based upon historical events. If duplicity were allowed in unique cases, the criteria for those situations would have to be publicly debated and collectively chosen. Consequently, we can view the dismissal of inquiries into such practices as the defense of unwarranted power -- power bypassing the consent of the governed.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Accusations surrounding the President’s behavior have been minimized by some, because the economy is doing well, we are not at war, taxes are acceptable, and so on. This red herring is popular. Yet, these hypocritical defenders of the President, who initially campaigned for truth (telling the voters that lying is wrong), change the rules whenever it appears to be in their interest to do so. This implies that those holding political office can override or nullify the vested rights of the people: that public officials can deceive the people for the sake of the people, a self-contradictory practice in a democratic government.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">While Sexgate exposes issues dealing with personal conduct, observers agree that deception is present in many everyday decisions in government. For example, public servants may lie to others holding office in an attempt to protect programs they believe important, or to secure secrets they have been told not to disclose. Furthermore, what is to keep members of congress from making deals with one another to vote for measures they would otherwise oppose, then deny having made the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quid pro quo</i> agreement? Rumors may be leaked when unpopular executive action is about to be taken, or the leak may be true but falsely attributed in order to protect the source.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">All of these lies are now so widely expected that voters are at a loss to know when they can and cannot believe what a candidate claims while campaigning. The damage to trust is irreversible. Our democratic system is undermining itself by lulling the voters into thinking most politicians are so similar it does not really make much difference who gets elected -- a dangerous generalization indeed. Unfortunately, the ramifications of deceit and distrust only surface after the damage has been done, when reaction is necessary and proaction is not a possibility. Lies do weaken our political system and those serving the public should be held to the highest standards. No lie is acceptable: mine, yours, or theirs. Government officials should not condone lies, but categorically speak, and practice, the truth.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Cindy Wright is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Friendship</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A Dialogue</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Christopher Gutt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Thank you for calling me. I just had to get away from everybody. I could not even stay at home, because they kept calling me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Did you get into a fight with them?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: No, our friendships still persist; however, we do the same thing every night, and they find it difficult to understand that I would rather do something else for a change. Also, I am having similar difficulties with my girlfriend, Merideth. Whenever we are together, all we do is have sex. Other than that, she enjoys going out and getting drunk, but I do not. There seems to be something lacking in our relationship.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Would you say there is something lacking in your relationship with George or Ben?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Perhaps, but those are not the same as my relationship with Merideth.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: You said that you were tired of doing things with George and Ben, yet you seem tired of not doing things with Merideth. At what point would you be doing too much with someone?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: I think that how two friends spend their time together is more important than how much time they spend together.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: What do you mean when you say "friends"?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Well, I would say that George and Ben are my friends; I am not sure about Merideth, though.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: What quality do your relationships with George and Ben have that your relationship with Merideth lacks?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Sometimes I doubt that I know Merideth as well as I know George or Ben.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Do you mean that familiarity is essential for friendship?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Yes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: I saw Ben reading the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. He is certainly familiar with Douglass, but Douglass is not his friend, nor would they be friends if Douglass were alive today and had read a book about Ben.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: There is a difference between knowing someone and knowing about someone, which is that when we know someone, we share an experience with that person.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Two people inhabit two separate bodies. It must be difficult for them to share the same experience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: I mean that one's experience of a set of stimuli has the same meaning as the other's experience of the same set of stimuli.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: If I poke you in the side, what meaning will that have?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: It will not have meaning. Some experiences do have meaning, though; for example, when someone assaulted Frederick Douglass, it must have had meaning for him, or else he would not have written about it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: What meaning did it have?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: That would be for Douglass to decide.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: How do two people know that their experiences have the same meaning?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: It will be obvious. For example, I said that I doubted that my relationship with Merideth was a friendship, because we did not share experiences. When we have sex, it does not mean the same thing for her as it does for me, for if it did, it would mean for her that she desired to form a deeper friendship with me. We may find a contradiction to that claim in her unwillingness to do other things with me. In the case of assault, if you were to assault me for instance, it would mean that we were no longer friends.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: There would be that same meaning for me as well. However, this shared experience cannot be sufficient for friendship, for then the mutually recognized nonexistence of our friendship would actually imply, as the meaning of the assault, the existence of our friendship.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Yes; there must be another requirement for friendship, and I think this is an attraction to the other.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: I do not think you mean a sexual attraction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: No, but that is one type of attraction. Although I am sexually attracted to Merideth, we are still not friends because we do not also have the shared experiences, and the contradiction you mentioned does not hold in the context of attraction.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Are you attracted to Ben and George? You already told me you were tired of doing the same thing all the time.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: There may be other things we could do together. We used to play music together. Two people will be attracted to each other if they are similarly attracted to an activity or interest which draws them together.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Is that how you became friends with George and Ben? I would find it difficult to believe that you had shared the activity of playing music with them in your attic if you had not been friends before that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Actually, we became friends almost as soon as we introduced ourselves and started talking.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Do you start a conversation with everyone to whom you introduce yourself?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: No, but in their case I did, because looking at them, even at the way they were dressed, I could tell that they were like me and we had at least that interest in common to inspire conversation.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: If two people introduce themselves, do they not necessarily have the minimal shared interest of the introduction itself? In that case, all who introduce themselves would have the attraction, the shared experience and the </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">shared interest qualifying them as friends.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Then I would add to our list of qualifications the necessity that the relationship last through time, though I know you will ask me how long it must last, and I do not have an answer for that. I do know, however, that two people can introduce themselves out of habit, or out of obligation, and there need not be an actual interest in the event.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Concerning the case in which there is an interest for two people to introduce themselves, is there something different between that interest, attraction and experience and those interests, attractions and experiences which really bind them as friends?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: There is a necessary, but neither fixed nor minimal, difference between what or how much they do together.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Are we friends?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: Yes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: What are we doing together?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Neal: We are communicating.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Chris: Could we not communicate if we were not friends?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1" style="mso-hyphenate: none;">Neal: We could, but if we were not friends, we might not be so kind in doing so. In fact, I am getting somewhat annoyed at you for finding a contradiction in everything I say, but I do not hold it against you. We may say that friends do not hold things against each other, for they have established a willingness to forgive each other, which even those who provide the facade of kindness may not really have. I would say that this is essential in a friendship, and perhaps the shared time, interests, experience, and attraction two friends have only form the means by which they establish this willingness to forgive. You will see that for any two friends, there is to some degree a willingness to forgive. If there were not then they would not have made the commitment to become friends in the first place.</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;">.</span></div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Christopher Gutt is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">General Education and Convergence</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Joseph J. Weiner</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> One’s view of the world is limited when one thinks only in terms of categorized genres. The best forms of education recognize and exploit the necessary interrelatedness of the disciplines. This is the theme of convergence, which achieves a focus in a single discipline while integrating related aspects of others. A complete understanding of an issue requires an understanding of all perspectives from which that issue can be addressed and analyzed. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It follows that a general education program is vital to the curriculum of any liberal arts college. Consider, for example, the optimal integration of philosophy and literature. Since every method has philosophical presuppositions, the different methods of literary criticism enable us both to analyze texts and to become familiar with a variety of philosophical theories.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">In essence, convergence allows the student to develop fully as a thinker by introducing topics in a way that does not limit their potential scope and importance. For example, a student of mass communications with a solid foundation in American history could speculate intelligently about how popular cultural images came to be, and track the evolution of cultural changes in American society. A general education course in philosophy might add logical and ethical skills to the mix, allowing the student still greater insights into the dynamics of our culture.</div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Joseph Weiner is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Legitimate Expectations of General Education</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Katherine Jassen</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">‡</span> There are two legitimate components to what an educational institution does in the process that results in a diploma. One is verification (or certification). This is where the school assures some third party, and also the student him- or herself, that the student has measured up to some standard. The other is the actual transmission or facilitation of knowledge, techniques, information, and methods. Only the latter is "education," of course.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">Clearly a school's main job is "education." But verification purports to report education's "results" to other "customers" than just the student. When it's done well, these others (employers, grad schools, etc.) rely on its assurances. When it is done carelessly or dishonestly it cheats these people. They (and the student, too, of course) are falsely assured of the student's competence. Standards for "passing" should reflect this. If someone fails to meet the standard, he or she should keep trying. If administrators find themselves tempted to slack off on the standards to which they will actually hold students, they should instead consider retiring the requirement. Similarly, if someone has already exceeded it, as with athletes who have clearly already learned and applied “phys ed" skills, it is inappropriate for the school to require more.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Diplomas and transcripts, upon graduation, provide three kinds of verification: that the student has met the minimal requirements, that (where appropriate) work beyond the minimum has been done, and its nature, and that the student has also met whatever the school requires in terms of gen eds. Of these three components, which can a school plausibly take "credit" for? Certainly they can take credit for their role in students' work done beyond the minimum, for that kind of learning almost surely occurs in residence and reflects on the school's actual offerings. And they may also claim credit for most of the "major" work in a minimal degree, because few students enter with much skill beyond the first-year level.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But general education requirements are different! Almost all gen eds at almost any college occur precisely at entry-level, where a lot of work is repetition. So the real purpose of the broadly distributed liberal arts gen eds is purely to verify, by the end of college, that no gaps need filling. Sure, most students will have such gaps, and so these gen eds will always have "customers." The class you were not good in, the class your school did not offer, the class you had always hoped you could avoid. But it is not possible to deduce, from the diplomas at the end, which (if any) of your gen ed skills you learned there and which you came in with. For this reason, it should be entirely possible for any student (at not just MCLA, but any school) to be able to "test out" of any gen ed requirement. It is legitimate to expect students actually to grasp what the gen eds are intended to provide. It is not okay to require these things of everyone merely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pro forma</i>, merely "to say we did." If they are not willing to exempt people with existing skills, or truly to educate the ones who do not have them, they have no business requiring these skills at all.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Katherine Jassen is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">General Education</span></b></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A Dialogue</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Gary Burchard and Janice Stefane</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> We have based the following, fictional dialogue on the results of interviews with MCLA students on the topic of general education.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Setting: the cafeteria, lunch time. A student is eating and looking over next semester’s schedule. Another student enters, sitting opposite the seated student.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: Hey, what’s up?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: I didn’t see you at the party last night. Where were you? It was quite an event! The party got busted and my friend hurled all over the cop’s shirt. What a sight!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: I was studying for a Western Civ test.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: On a Friday night?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: Hey, I have to pass the class, or I don’t graduate next semester. It’s my last gen ed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: Gen eds! Don’t even mention gen eds. I have to take a kazillion of them next semester. It’s such a waste of time. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: That’s what I thought at first. I figured it would be more beneficial to concentrate on classes dealing with my major. I came here to get my degree and then get a job. All of these unrelated courses seemed like a waste of time and money.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: Yeah. I pay for my own education. I can’t believe someone requires me to take 18 specific courses to graduate. How am I supposed to graduate in four years? With all these gen eds it will take six years.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: I’ve done it in four years. Somehow I even managed to pull off a double major in the meantime.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">smirking</i>) Yeah, but you stay in on Friday nights studying for classes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">smugly</i>) I make up for it on Saturdays. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Student 2: Look at this (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sliding tentative schedule over to Student1</i>). I only have one course scheduled relating to my major, the rest are all gen eds. I have no interest in any of them. Tell me, when am I going to use half of this stuff? I think my friend has it right, “All the math needed in the real world was taught in high school.” And I can’t believe I have to take two phys ed courses. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sarcastically</i>) At least they offer bowling and golf. If we’re lucky they might offer shuffleboard and checkers next year. I look at it this way; if I can’t find a job, at least I can join the bowling league.</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: You’re not serious, are you?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: Of course not. But I do think that substitutions should be offered. If I don’t want to take history, some other course I am interested in should be offered as an alternative. I may not be good at history. Besides, some of this stuff I already took in high school. It was easy then, and boring. I don’t want to have to repeat it. Where’s the challenge in that?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: If you want a challenge, wouldn’t learning new subject matter be just that? Can acquiring more knowledge be detrimental? College is a place not only for learning new material, but studying formerly presented material in depth, as well. You said you might not be good at history and should therefore be offered an alternative like writing, for instance. Isn’t that just a cop out?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: What do you mean, ‘a cop out’?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: Don’t you think that a good reason to take the history is simply because you’re not good at it? Taking an alternative means depriving yourself of the knowledge and skills that the class has to offer. Isn’t the point of an education to improve skills you have and acquire skills you don’t? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: What about skills and knowledge that I’m not going to need?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: How do you know you’re not going to need them? Have you taken your philosophy gen ed yet?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: No, and I don’t want to either. Why do I need to know what a bunch of dead Greek white guys thought? “I think, therefore I am”; and “I know that I know nothing.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: I had the same misconceptions until I took the class. I found that philosophy is much more than the thoughts of a bunch of dead Greek white guys. I had never been exposed to philosophy before this intro class, I thought. But I found out that it is something I do everyday, and is, like other gen eds, interrelated with other courses and disciplines. My gen ed skills are building blocks which create a broad foundation of knowledge. This knowledge base is important in any discipline, including my major. As a matter of fact, I happened to change my major because I found other interests in other gen eds I was required to take.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: But I’m not going to change my major. I came here for a degree and I already have a specific job in mind. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pointing to a half-eaten piece of pizza</i>) Are you gonna eat that?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: No, here (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">passing the pizza across the table</i>). When you go to apply for this job, don’t you think that the employer, when faced with the choice of two equally qualified applicants, would choose the one with the broader background of knowledge? This would make the employee more versatile and more attractive toward future advancement in diverse areas.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Student 2: Well, I guess so. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: Many people don’t even have a career that coincides with the field of study they followed in college. If they do, people change jobs and careers an average of eight times in their life.* Gen eds give one the skills and tools needed to make job and career changes easier. This knowledge base makes less extra schooling and training necessary when one switches a career. Gen eds also provide skills to create understanding and help one excel in a diverse society.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: All right, I see your point. Some of it might be useful. Knowing about different things isn’t necessarily bad. But I’m an American. I pay for my education. Who are they to tell me what’s best for me? Only I know what’s best for me. This is an infringement of my academic freedom. I pay, I choose! How can they sit in their offices deciding what I need and what I don’t need? Then they tell me I can’t graduate without these things. Aren’t I responsible for my own education? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 1: You know, what you said reminds me of my little brother. He doesn’t want to eat his dinner; he would rather have cookies instead. If he had his way, he would live on nothing but cookies. It’s what he wants and what he thinks he needs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: Huh?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Student 1: What I’m saying is that one’s desires are not always synonymous with one’s needs. My brother didn’t know that he couldn’t live on cookies until he got a little older and acquired some more experience. Now, he still desires the cookies, but realizes that he first needs to eat other things, then can have some cookies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Student 2: Well . . . . . . . . . I need to get to class. I’ll see you later (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exits the cafeteria</i>). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Student 1 smiles thinking, I’m gonna go get some cookies, and leaves the table</i>.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9pt;">* Statistics taken from the job hunter’s guide, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What Color Is Your Parachute?</i></span></div><div class="FootnoteText1">. </div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Gary Burchard and Janice Stefane are students at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">General Education and Foreign Languages</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Tracy Fraser</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The most common response I receive when I ask how students feel about having foreign language as a general education requirement is: “Who needs it? I won’t have any use for it in the ‘real world’.” One would be inclined to think this given the attitude toward foreigners in this country. It is a common belief in this country, among both young and old, that if you come to the United States, even if only for a vacation, you should speak our language. How many people who hold this belief have actually been to other countries and are fluent in the languages of the nation that they visit? Speaking from personal experience, when I traveled to Mexico I never spoke Spanish, and yet everyone I ran into, from hotel managers to cab drivers, were able to speak to me, in English. The same should be true in our country. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It is about time for it to be a requirement for all college graduates to have at least a working knowledge of another language. Especially those graduating from a Liberal Arts college. If you graduate with a Liberal Arts degree from many other Liberal Arts colleges, then you are required to take four years of a foreign language. Should the same not be true for all other degrees? There is no profession for which having a working knowledge of another language would not be beneficial. This is true of teaching, for instance. There are many schools now, particularly in the southwest and large cities, where even to be considered for a teaching position you are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">required</i> to have a working knowledge of Spanish. Even if the position is not one that would require teaching Spanish, the teacher must be able to communicate with students for whom English is not a first language. The same is true for anyone who wishes to become involved in police work, most types of business that deal with foreign trade, hotel and restaurant management, and many other popular professions. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">English may be the official language of the United States, but a very large portion of the population does not speak English as a first language, and have had to learn simply to survive in this country. To deny that is to bury our heads in the sand. As the premiere public liberal arts college of the state, this school needs to do everything it can to ensure that students receive a well-rounded education, and that involves, to a certain degree, preparing students to live in the “real world.” The real world consists of many people of many different backgrounds who speak many different languages. This school does not actively promote the opportunity to become interested in a foreign language because it is not a general education requirement. Not to have even one foreign language requirement denies students a liberal education, and quite probably hurts their ability to be first in line for a job.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1">choices they confront and the purposes of those courses. </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Tracy Fraser is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">General Education at MCLA</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Maude Mikulewicz</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt;">‡</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> I propose that a change needs to be made in the current system of general education at MCLA. Although I approve of the concept of general education, I believe that the format is unnecessarily restrictive, and could be made more student- and faculty-friendly with a few changes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Currently, the system is set up so that a student has a number of different categories to fill, all designated by number. These categories contain several different classes, sometimes spanning more than one department, and the student must pick one of these to fulfill the requirement. Instead of this system, I propose that, with some exceptions, a student must pick one class from every department. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There are two main reasons for the proposed change. The first assumes that individual departments know best which courses are appropriate for an introductory level student, and which courses are more advanced. So by opening up every course in a department without a prerequisite to be used as a general education course, it expands the student's choices without causing a student to enroll in a class he or she is not ready for. </span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The second benefit of this system would be to cut down on general education waivers and courses that simply repeat material the student already knows. For example, under the current system, a proficient English student must either take Composition I or be waived out of it. But if a student is able to pick from any lower division courses in the Department, and is able to prove that he or she has mastered the skills of the Composition courses, then he or she would be free to move directly to Essentials of Literature (the next departmental prerequisite) and then on to specific writing or literature courses of interest while still fulfilling general education requirements. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It could be argued that this proposal misses the point of general education – to make sure that each student has a sufficient grasp of elementary material. But this seems opposed to the basic thrust of a quality, liberal arts education. Instead of requiring that students simply learn something in most fields, we should require that they learn something <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more</i> in most fields. This will foster both liberal learning and the idea that education is a lifelong goal – not something to be abandoned at a certain level of proficiency. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">It may be countered also that liberal learning, to be worthy of the name, must be cross-disciplinary. But the truth of the matter is that most of the general education requirements as they stand are already attached to a particular department. I maintain that having the requirements follow the natural fault lines of the departments, rather than artificial ones set by committee, would give students a clearer picture of the choices they confront and the purposes of those courses. </div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Maude Mikulewicz is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><br />
</div></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5277093716109348436.post-66609359771652103122012-06-07T11:50:00.000-04:002012-06-15T14:26:25.137-04:00Volume 6.1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div style="border-bottom: ridge; border-color: windowtext; border-left: groove; border-right: ridge; border-top: groove; border-width: 7.5pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt;"> <h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">THESIS</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><sub><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling";">xii</span></sub></i><span style="font-family: "Felix Titling"; font-size: 48.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></h1><h1 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Philosophical Newsletter</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></b></h1><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Volume 6 • Number 1 </span></h4><h4 style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ascii-font-family: Mistral; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: Mistral; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> 1998</span></h4><div class="MsoHeading7" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span></u></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></span></u></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Inside this Issue: <span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Matthew R. Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">CRITICAL THINKING AND TRUTH<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Katherine Jassen</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">J. F. POST’S ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Laurie Swiatek</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">IN DEFENSE OF SEX EDUCATION<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Peggy Vigiard</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-color-alt: windowtext; mso-border-left-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-right-alt: three-d-emboss; mso-border-top-alt: three-d-engrave; mso-border-width-alt: 7.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 4.0pt 1.0pt 9.0pt; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">ETHICS AND ANIMALS: A DIALOGUE<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-weight: normal;"></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20pt; font-weight: normal;">Critical Thinking and Truth</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Matthew R. Silliman</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> Some students recently raised a question about whether opinions as such could be mistaken (as Descartes says he has found many of his former views to be in error).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I replied by asking whether, since our opinions often <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">change</i> in light of new data on the subject, we don’t implicitly assume that opinions are right or wrong – that they have truth value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suggested the example of the opinion that it is raining outside; new evidence, as might be gotten by looking out the window, would easily show the opinion to be either true or false.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The students cleverly countered with an example of an aesthetic opinion, the sort famously resistant to rational disputation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I conceded that this was a more difficult case to settle, that it presented a much greater epistemological challenge, but that nonetheless most judgments of taste probably <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> have reasons behind them (psychological, historical, physiological) whether conscious or not, and, therefore, possess as well truth conditions (correct or incorrect ways of characterizing or naming those reasons).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As evidence of this I observed that we often find our first impressions (hating opera) yielding to more nuanced views (liking opera, or being able to appreciate it even if we do not normally seek it out) when we are more educated about a subject, or have come to associate it with other experiences and ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The multiple (and often invisible) reasons for an aesthetic opinion may often be beyond the reach of certain knowledge, but there surely are reasons for tastes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">It struck me during this conversation that students who believe opinions are simply reports on their internal states (rather than claims to be explained and defended) are well-insulated against serious investigation of their views.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is to say, their ability to think critically, to examine and test their own and each others’ statements for insight or error, adequacy or cant, is severely limited, since they hold a person’s opinions as rightful possessions not subject to reason, like parts of their bodies or wristwatches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This may help explain the common habit of writing “feel” when what they mean is “think.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Learning to think critically means stripping away some of the layers of self-protective insulation, a process that is understandably uncomfortable, and even threatening at first.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Reflecting on this phenomenon led me to wonder how some of their teachers, among whom it is fashionable to deny that there is such a thing as truth, can possibly be teaching them to think critically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can we ask students to give reasoned accounts of what they think if we deny, in principle and in advance, that one view may be superior to another, one sequence of reasoning more adequate than another?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course such claims can be parsed in softer terminology:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>one view is merely more <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">complete</i>; a line of reasoning more <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">persuasive</i>, but this only begs the question of our criteria for completeness or persuasiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the students’ instinctive defensiveness, it insulates us from having to explain and defend what we really think is true in any direct or perspicuous way.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The American philosopher Charles Peirce famously observed that people normally avoid thinking critically until forced to confront a contradiction in their beliefs; then they exert themselves for only as long as it takes to restore a fixed state of belief, and stop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What needs explanation, though, is why some of our students exert themselves so vigorously in their efforts to avoid challenging their settled beliefs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They seem to work harder at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> thinking critically than they would have to work if they engaged the texts and their opinions directly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">I suspect part of the answer lies in a sort of inmates’ mentality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Years of compulsory education have taught many of them deeply defensive habits and attitudes, and the only thing that can displace such habits are potent new habits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus it will help to consider critical thinking not just as a tool for academic purposes, but as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disposition</i>, an entirely new orientation toward both intellectual tasks and daily life that must be cultivated habitually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The essence of the habit is simple:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ask yourself at every opportunity whether your opinions are true, and why you think so.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Matthew R. Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">J. F. Post’s Anti-foundationalism</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Katherine Jassen</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">No statement in John F. Post's recent essay on epistemology is more remarkable than that in his closing argument, in his next to last paragraph, where he says we should consider the laws of noncontradiction and of logic itself to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a posteriori</i> knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could blink and miss it; he presents this without flourish or emphasis; it sneaks out of the bushes without the heavy treatment he gives some of his supporting arguments; and he effaces its potential bombshell effect with a final paragraph murmuring of his mild expectations as to its reception.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A modest presentation for a startling proposition, because he is claiming, for realism, that which almost every authority cheerfully yields to idealism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nowhere else have I encountered an epistemic system which, if it grants <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a priori</i> knowledge at all, does not classify “logic,” “mathematics,” and “the law of noncontradiction” as same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are considered the very bedrock, the foundation, of the deductive class of thinking.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Post spent a great deal of time early in this essay establishing that there is hidden foundationalism in irrealist thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He asked us to consider that this is a flaw, a weakness, a fallacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But throughout the body of his essay he did not establish to my satisfaction that this foundationalism was flawed or doomed, and so this argument was beginning to seem to be merely repetitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon encountering his final argument, now I see that his goal all along was to prepare us for the fact that he would be pulling the rug out from under the irrealists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That which irrealists assume is their “foundation” (logical structure), Post claims comes only from the world, empirically, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a posteriori</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus by their own argument, they'd have no access to it.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I find his argument to be secure, at least initially, from irrealist attack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Irrealists will wish to protest Post's theft (from their “own”' list of approved, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a priori</i>, knowledge-sources) of the laws of noncontradiction and logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to do so, they will now have to state how they have unmediated access to such knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This, Post has explained to us previously, they have never been called on to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He showed that most irrealists do not acknowledge the structural foundationalism of their arguments; an exception is Plantinga (quoted on p. 248):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"We cannot so much as raise the question of the reliability of reason!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a tug-of-war between Post and irrealists, Post claims access to knowledge of logic through empirical, inductive, and abductive means, and the irrealists claim what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That "we just know," perhaps; and that the "we" (who know these things) "...are in charge"? (p. 264).</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">So, though Post's claim for knowledge of logic seems startlingly novel, in overturning an assumption previously shared by both sides, fortunately for him its vulnerability lies in that area which irrealists cannot reach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They cannot successfully attack Post's worldly claim, since they cannot enter or use the world at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further, they are equally vulnerable due to the novelty of having to defend their own claim; they are unprepared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any 'mere' claim for themselves seems weak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Irrealists would thus lose such a tug-of-war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They have only one valid objection to his theft, which is that when logic was considered theirs, it was considered a sure thing (deductive, necessary) whereas his claim is not even sure on his own account, but merely probabilistic, inductive, descriptive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This point, while valid, disturbs only them and not Post, so it gains them no ground.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div align="center" class="MsoPlainText" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">References</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">J. F. Post. “Epistemology.” In D. Weissman, Ed. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Descartes</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Katherine Jassen is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">In Defense of Sex Education</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Laurie Swiatek</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span> Public schools must offer comprehensive sex education courses beginning in grade school and continuing throughout high school if they are to fulfill their mission of assisting children and adolescents in achieving autonomy as healthy human beings.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Most states mandate sex education courses as part of the formal school curriculum;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>however, studies have revealed that most of these programs are inadequate. While a majority of parents approve of sex education for their children, a small, often right-wing, highly vocal minority has opposed sex education and attempted to influence local school districts, which have in turn responded by watering down programs to cover only the most cursory, "safe" topics.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Research shows that children who receive comprehensive sex education benefit in a number of ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Students benefit from a deeper understanding of their human sexuality which results in deeper self-understanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The shame that often accompanies any sexual discussion or activity, a product of our long, theologically-oriented heritage which equates sex with sin, has been shown frequently to result in sexual dysfunction later in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through education, however, many individuals become empowered to examine, understand, and evolve their operative beliefs, resulting in their greater emotional and psychological health.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Most children do not receive sex education at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While some parents may feel comfortable and capable of discussing certain topics within the field of human sexuality with their children, most feel ill-equipped to deliver broad-based instruction, and often lack much of the requisite knowledge to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the absence of formal education, children seek information, often inaccurate, from either their friends or through their own experimentation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, education is a proven factor in reducing high-risk sexual activity and behaviors among adolescents; and because some sexually transmitted diseases are life-threatening, instruction in their prevention is an absolute imperative for our schools.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world (though the actual levels of sexual activity in our country are no higher than in other nations).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, there is a need for a more effective use of contraception among American teens; and, in fact, research shows that sex education is one of the most effective means of reducing the teen pregnancy rate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Educated teens are more likely to discuss openly and consider contraception methods prior to engaging in sexual activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Broad-based education in human sexuality has been found to enhance communication not only between teens and their partners, but between teens and their parents as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1">Research reveals an additional social benefit of comprehensive sex education:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>homophobic attitudes are greatly reduced by teaching children that what is considered "natural" sexual behavior, is in fact, relative to tradition or convention, both within our culture and worldwide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because every school serves a homosexual population of students, most of whom are often ostracized and scorned by their peers (and sometimes even by their families), schools should be legally and morally compelled to provide accurate information to all students.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only by promoting such an understanding will we realize our goals of greater social cohesion and inclusivity, both within the school setting, and in our communities at large.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">One might counter that the study of human sexuality within the school setting might be interpreted by students as a sanctioning of sexual activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, research shows that there are no data to support this claim; sex education leads neither to earlier sexual activity, nor to experimentation among adolescents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some research has indicated, to the contrary, that educated teens are more likely to postpone their sexual debut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, because broadly focused sex education for adolescents promotes physical and psychological, as well as social, well-being, it should be a part of every school curriculum throughout America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="tab-stops: .5in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">References</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Crooks, Robert and Baur, Karla.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our Sexuality</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., 1996.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Harbeck, Karen M.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Coming Out of the Classroom Closet</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New York: Haworth Press Inc., 1992.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyTextIndent"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Hockenberry-Eaton, Marilyn; Richman, Mary Jane; DiIorio, Colleen; Rivero, Theresa. "Mother and Adolescent Knowledge of Sexual Development: The Effects of Gender, Age, and Sexual Experience<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">." Adolescence 31</i> (Spring 1996): 35-47.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Laurie Swiatek is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="-moz-border-bottom-colors: none; -moz-border-image: none; -moz-border-left-colors: none; -moz-border-right-colors: none; -moz-border-top-colors: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color -moz-use-text-color windowtext; border-style: none none solid; border-width: medium medium 1pt; padding: 0in; text-align: center;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: medium none; padding: 0in;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 20.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Ethics and Animals</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Mistral; font-size: 16.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">A Dialogue</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading9" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Peggy Vigiard</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Symbol;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> [The following is a fictional dialogue between philosopher (and animal liberationist) Peter Singer and an advocate of human-centered ethics. – Ed.]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="FootnoteText1"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peter Singer</i>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those who would support cruel treatment of nonhuman animals by eating meat and using products developed through animal experimentation are guilty of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">speciesism </i>– the general view that human animals, as a species, have greater moral worth than nonhuman animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Speciesism is comparable to other forms of prejudice, like racism and sexism.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Advocate</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Morality is a human institution that is maintained (by humans) for our own purposes and our own social good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because kindness and compassion contribute to the human good, we should not inflict needless suffering on nonhuman animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, we are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> obligated to promote the good<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of nonhuman animals at our own expense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This would run counter to the whole purpose of morality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for speciesism being as bad as racism or sexism – that is just not true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The difference between black and white is only a matter of race, just as the difference between men and women is simply a matter of sex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The difference between human and nonhuman animals is not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simply</i> a matter of species.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Peter Singer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the similarities, not the obvious differences, that are important:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because there are some nonhuman animals that care about their interests as much as we care about our own, we should consider the interests of these nonhuman animals to be just as important as ours, and respect their interests as we would want ours to be respected.</span></div><div class="FootnoteText1"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Advocate</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your golden rule theory makes no sense because we cannot expect nonhuman animals to treat us the same way we treat them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They can only act in a manner that is consistent with what they are – nonhuman <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">animals</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Peter Singer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonhuman animals cannot apply the golden rule to us because they are not moral agents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we are moral agents and we know the difference between right and wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just because the interests and goals of nonhuman animals are not always the same as ours, we are not entitled to assume that they are any less important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nonhuman animals can experience pain and pleasure just as human animals can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it is wrong to cause human suffering without good reason, then it is also wrong to cause unnecessary pain and suffering in the case of nonhuman animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pain that nonhumans experience is of equal moral importance as the pain humans experience.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Advocate</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some pain is necessary if it is needed to serve our own interests, such as those involving medical research on nonhuman animals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, most people enjoy eating meat and, although it is not necessary, it is a important human interest.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Peter Singer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agree some animal pain is necessary to serve important human interests, but eating meat certainly is not one of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, a lot of research conducted on nonhuman animals is trivial and unnecessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is that most humans <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> speciesists when it comes to deciding when it is appropriate to kill other beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To avoid speciesism, we must believe that beings which are similar in all morally important respects have a similar right to life, and that being a member of our own biological species cannot morally be a condition on which this right is based.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are certainly nonhuman animals whose lives are more valuable than the lives of some humans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, a normal adult pig or a dog will have a higher degree of self-awareness and a greater capacity for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we base the right to life on these characteristics we must grant these animals a right to life as good or better than the retarded infant.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Advocate</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we accept this argument, then it could also follow that killing dogs or pigs because of their age or level of suffering would be a moral offense because of their right to life, and severely retarded or handicapped humans could be killed for trivial reasons because they have no right to life.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Peter Singer</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though most of the time a human life is considered more important than the life of a nonhuman animal, there are some instances when it may not be so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we are ever in a situation where we must choose between a human and a nonhuman life (or want to justify any sort of killing), our decision should be based on the characteristics of the individuals involved, not their species.</span></div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoHeading8" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Peggy Vigiard is a student at MCLA</span></div><div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><br />
</div></div></div>David K. Braden-Johnsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17913431807951417405noreply@blogger.com0