Thesis XII Online

Volume 17.1

2010-01-05T11:20:00.000-08:00

Contents:

1. Stephen Kullas, "Defining and Defending Altruism"
2. Shelby Giaccarini, "Organic Farming"
3. Benjamin Hollows, "Plato & Myth"
4. Jacob A. Wheeler, "Danto’s Slippers"

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1. "Defining and Defending Altruism," by Stephen Kullas

(Stephen enters)

Joe: You are just flat out wrong!
Nick: Dismissing my arguments dogmatically now are we Joe?
Stephen: Whoa, Whoa! Take it easy! What is going on?
Joe: Nick opened his mouth and, as usual, let utter garbage fall from it.

Nick: Ad hominem attack; truly pathetic.

Stephen: Ok you two, just what are you arguing about?

Joe: Nick, ever the optimist, thinks that humans are altruists.

Nick: There you go putting words in my mouth, I said that we have the capacity for altruism, and that it may even be commonplace.

Joe: What it actually has come down to, is that we disagree with the definition of altruism, and so we cannot continue further.

Nick: Yes, Joe defines altruism as an act of good for the benefit of others, in which the actor gains no conscious benefit.

Joe: Whereas Nick thinks it is any act of self sacrifice for the benefit of others. We have simply reached an impasse.

Stephen: Well, I’m not entirely sure that is the case; let us quickly examine your definition Joe. You would surely agree that there can be few, if any cases in which the actor has no conscious benefit even from acts of charity?

Joe: I do, that is my exact claim.

Stephen: Well then, you have simply created a definition that you could easily defeat. It is as if I defined a ‘good person’ as someone who has never acted in a bad way; by this definition I can show that there are no good people, which you would surely agree is false. Your definition is designed to prove what you set out to prove.

Joe: Well, I think I see your point, but my definition’s inadequacies hardly makes Nick’s better.

Stephen: Actually, given a choice between the two, I would be inclined to choose Nick’s definition, with one amendment.

Nick: Oh?

Stephen: You define Altruism as self sacrifice for the benefit of others, but we must be careful to stipulate that the benefit to others must be the central focus, or impetus of the action.

Joe: You have painted yourself into a corner now, as we cannot know what a person’s central reason for action is!

Stephen: If you mean to know with absolute certainty, in the Cartesian sense, then you are correct. However, since we can know little with the certainty of Descartes’ cogito, we can infer, through an assessment of the benefits and the costs of an action, what the primary drive of the act is. If the benefits outweigh the costs, then a person is acting mainly out of self-regard. However, if the costs outweigh the benefits then little else but altruism could explain it.

Joe: Well, then the burden of proof is on you. Show me an example of this commonplace altruism.

Nick: The best example is parenthood. The very institution of parenthood, and by this I mean non-neglectful parenting, is altruistic. The many costs of child-rearing could not possibly be outweighed by the benefits, and any perceived long term investments of having children are risky ones at best.

Joe: Well it would seem that parenthood, under your definition, is indeed an institution in which altruism is commonplace.

Nick: Then it is settled.
Joe: Not so fast. I think your cost-benefit analyses may trick you into seeing altruism where there is none.

Nick: What do you mean?

Joe: Here’s an example. A family is going on an evening stroll, and the child’s tricycle rolls off the curb into traffic. The husband jumps into the street and rescues the child, ruining his shoes and trousers in the process. According to your cost-benefit analysis, this is altruism, but hold that thought a moment. Later that evening his wife thanks him and asks why he did it, and he admits that he would not have been able to live with himself if he hadn’t. Thus egoism inevitably reasserts itself. The positive benefits to the actor actually outweigh the cost

Nick: There is a fundamental flaw with that logic, in that it fails to explore the root of the potential guilt. The reason this man would feel guilty for not helping is because he is an altruist; otherwise he simply would not care. So if altruism were impossible then the guilt would not exist.

Stephen: We have certainly come a long way from the definitional impasse.

Joe: Two against one, it was hardly fair…

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2. "Organic Farming," by Shelby Giaccarini

Humans have a moral obligation to buy organic food, because organic farming is better for the environment. The environment is, at least, instrumentally valuable to humans. “Better for the environment” means better than conventionally grown food. Organic food, as defined by the USDA National Organic Program, is that which is grown “without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation.” Organic animals are not given antibiotics or growth hormones. (1)

Organic food is better for the environment because it does not contain pesticides or fertilizers. Pesticides poison the soil and water, and have been linked with the deaths of fish and birds. (2) Synthetic fertilizers that are used in conventional farming run off into rivers and can create dead zones, such as in the Gulf of Mexico, where there is now a dead zone larger than the state of New Jersey. (3)

Organic farming is also better for the environment because it does not use antibiotics. Non-organic feedlot animals are given antibiotics to prevent disease and infection. They are also used to control bacterial infections in non-organic fruits and vegetables. These antibiotics then spread into surface and ground water supplies. (4) According to Michael Pollan, “Most of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed, a practice that is leading directly to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.” (5)

The lack of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, also makes organic farming better for the environment. Herbicide-resistant crops and virus-resistant crops are the most popular genetic modifications to plants. If a crop is herbicide-resistant, farmers can spray it with chemicals and not harm the crop, while all of the surrounding plant life dies. This creates farms that are “devoid of wildlife and will spell disaster for millions of already declining birds and plants." (6) The use of GMOs eliminates diversity, which is a key component to a healthy environment, and “may gradually create dangerous, invasive species-type monocultures.” (7)

Buying organic foods supports organic agriculture. As more people support organic agriculture, conventional agriculture will dwindle. If fewer farmers grow food conventionally, less pesticides, fertilizers, GMOs, and antibiotics will be used, and the environment will be damaged less.

One may object to this thesis by questioning whether organic farming is enough better to outweigh the problems of doing it on a large scale. For example, in the words of Pollan, an “organic meal [that has been shipped long distances or heavily processed] is nearly as drenched in fossil fuel as its conventional counterpart…while it is true that organic farmers don’t spread fertilizers made from natural gas or spray pesticides made from petroleum, industrial organic farmers often wind up burning more diesel fuel than their conventional counterparts…” (8)

This objection is most likely correct. It seems, then, that perhaps buying organic food is only one piece of the puzzle. Buying local, small-scale, and in-season food may be at least as big of a factor as organic is. When we buy food from local farmers, we can find out what kind of fertilizers, pesticides, and other methods the farmer uses, all while eliminating a large portion of the fossil fuels used in transportation.

Notes

1. www.organic.org/education/faqs
2. www.pmac.net/bird_fish_CA.html
3. www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ summary/sci;285/5428/661d
4. www.tufts.edu/med/apua/Ecology/EIA.html
5. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma p. 78
6. www.saynotogmos.org/ud2006/ usept06.php#confused
7. http://www.alternet.org/environment/19628
8. Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma p. 182

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3. "Plato & Myth," by Benjamin Hollows

Myths, as allegorical metaphors, attempt to explain the nature of the universe, and promote particular values and moral visions, behind the interplay of images. Myths, and discussion of their uses, are abundant in Plato’s dialogues; and Plato’s association with myth is closely linked with his involvement in the Mysteries. (1) Aside from discussing the role of myth in Republic, Plato makes use of myth to conceal teachings of the Mysteries within his work, to expound those teachings covertly, and to help explain the idea of a teaching with the metaphorical nature of myth.

When revealing theological notions accessible to anyone, the nature of myth as a story (mythos=story) is appealing because it is a means more engaging for the (uninitiated) hearer than straightforward doctrinal discourse. As Plato notes in Statesman, however, these allegorical metaphors are prone to literal interpretation, and the uneducated misunderstand and distort the myth, and abuse or lose the original meaning of something sacred (269b). Throughout Republic, Plato critiques the use of myths which reveal falsehoods about the gods, as this profanes sacred teachings, and misleads the general public who rely heavily on myth to find values and morals. Plato disparages of tales told about the gods as cruel, violent and emotional beings who kill and rape each other, which leads to false belief of the true nature of the gods, and provoke dangerous emotion in humans; this is the reason for banishing myth from his city of justice, constructed in Republic. (2)

“First, telling the greatest falsehood about the most important things doesn’t make a fine story – I mean Hesiod telling us about how Ouranos behaved, how Cronos punished him for it, and how he was in turn punished by his own son. But even if it were true, it should be passed over in silence, not told to foolish young people. And if, for some reason, it has to be told, only a very few people – pledged to secrecy and after sacrificing not just a pig but something great and scarce – should hear it, so that their number is kept as small as possible.” (378a)

Despite such repeated criticisms, Plato uses myth throughout Republic, including the famous allegory of the cave, and the myth which concludes the dialogue in Book X, in which Er returns to earth after a near-death experience to share his knowledge with others. In the allegory of the cave, Plato shows how one must purge oneself of falsehoods before climbing upwards to the Good and the truth; this holds for handling myths the same way, as one must look beyond the literal interpretation of myths. For the safety of the public, Republic blocks all myth and storytelling except that which portrays gods and heroes as virtuous, good beings who help people believe in noble ways -- like the myths Plato constructs at the end of Republic and Phaedo.

Myths also have the appeal, for Plato, of playing upon one’s intuition with the images they present. (3) Although Plato argues for the turn away from sense dependency towards rationality, one must appeal to intuitive means to understand certain laws of nature and glimpse the forms, in which one temporally transcends rationality, which can be done with the help of conjuring images to one’s mind (Rep. 509-511). Humans have knowledge of certain forms within the mind, as humans were once acquainted with their nature (4) and images can help one recollect this knowledge, as shown in Meno (81d). Therefore, the images one may entertain from a myth penetrate one’s mind and may help to restore the knowledge of a form. The myth in Phaedrus, for example, and the images it conjures may help one recollect knowledge of the nature of soul (248); also in Phaedrus, the image of a loved one helps one recollect the form of Beauty (251a).

Plato also uses myths for their ability to conceal, rather than reveal, as some teachings were thought best kept secret, and only the initiated and educated would be able to understand them. This is another method of preventing psychological harm to those who are not prepared, as their insight must be gradually awakened (as Plato suggests metaphorically in the allegory of the cave, it takes gradation to adjust to the light). By only hinting at them in myth, Plato serves the further purpose of avoiding punishment for revealing teachings meant to be kept secret under strict initiation.

Before giving an explanation of the origin and nature of the universe, Timaeus claims, “it is fitting for us to receive the likely story about these things and not to search further for anything beyond it” (29d), and elsewhere stresses the commitment to “likely accounts” (48d). In Phaedrus, before describing the soul, Socrates says that for such an account he must “say what it is like”, as the actual description is a “task for a god” (246a). He describes the nature of such things through myth with simile and metaphor, because of their abstract nature. These matters have a nature beyond our human rationality, and therefore one must appeal to ‘likely accounts’ to describe them. As the images myths produce help play upon one’s intuition, they may reveal an understanding of something beyond the reach human rational abilities.

Plato thus thought the use of myth was both appropriate and necessary for speaking/writing for a general audience, so long as it is closely monitored. Myth’s ability to conjure images and explain abstract notions through metaphor renders it a useful education tool. Given its ability to make the abstract even more hidden, myth is also a medium to share and continue teachings to those prepared to carry on the knowledge of the Mystery tradition, safe from the public eye.

Notes

1. For Plato, the ‘Greek Mystery Religions’ of Orpheus and Eleusis, as well as Pythagorean teachings
2. Plato stresses cultivating the rational portion of the soul; the exaltation of our emotional side is something to avoid. (Republic 605)
3. In this instance, the myth is closely linked with the use of ritual in Mystery rites, as myths are frequently performed by initiates to help stimulate the consciousness of other initiates and their own.
4. Souls within humans glimpsed forms before becoming ensnared in bodies; see Phaedrus

References

Plato. Phaedrus. Translated by Alexander Nehamas & Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1995.
Plato. Republic. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1992.
Plato. Five Dialogues. Translated by G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2002.
Plato. Timaeus. Translated by Peter Kalkavage. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001.
Plato. Statesman. Translated by J.B. Skemp. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1957.

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4. "Danto’s Slippers," by Jacob A. Wheeler

“...The key then is to be able to distinguish between perceptually indistinguishable counterparts.” Arthur quickened his pace as the hands of the clock refused to slow; soon the class would spill out and not a single student would give his lecture the attention it was due.

“You must identify what may be perceptually indistinguishable is not necessarily conceptually indistin-guishable. To identify that which is art and that which is not, you must possess something, as Danto would say, ‘that the eye cannot decry.’ He further specifies this to be both an atmosphere of artistic theory and knowledge of the history of art.” As he finished his breath, the clock ticked its final toc and the class disappeared.

“Just in time” Arthur smiled to himself as he gathered his case and left.

Arthur strolled to and fro avoiding, quite deliberately, the scattered clothes and perilous props that littered the backstage. He checked his Rolex often and his pacing increased; where was she? He awaited his sister, Anna, as she finished her ballet recital; twenty two and still trying to dance; he scoffed and resumed his pensive perambulation. He stopped, tilted his head, and skipped forward. He spied a column, ionic by his conjecture, with a pair of ballet slippers positioned atop. They had fallen, one lying under another in a diagonal resting place. Seconds then minutes passed. He shook himself and left the room; he’d wait in the car.

Anna tossed the shirt aside with frustration, where were they? She spun around and took a deep breath, trying in vain to retrace her steps. Her brother was perpetually impatient and rarely laconic in his displeasure. She paused, he was going to be angry one way or the other; there was no need to worry any further. She sighed as her eyes fell upon the column. She grabbed her shoes and hurried out.

“I’m telling you dear” Arthur protested, “It was magnificent.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“I studied art history and theory at Harvard University.” he continued; his wife was adorable but had no concept for the subtleties of art. “I tell you, I wish there was a signature…I mean the way the light fell upon the top slipper…the shadow it cast. No amateur could have rendered it so.”

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Volume 16.2

2009-05-04T06:22:00.001-07:00

Contents:

1. Keane S. Lundt, "Socratic Self-Examination"
2. Louis E. Stelling, "Sociolinguistic Lessons for the Classroom"
3. Benjamin Hollows, "Socrates’ Body and Soul"
4. Daniel Sadlocha, " The Way of Objectivity"
5. Derek Anderson, "A Cup of Coffee Refused at Peter’s Place"

1. Socratic Self-Examination

Keane S. Lundt

Humankind may not survive into the 22nd century without self-examination. By self-examination I mean 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 Sensus communis (1) and systematically learned knowledge.

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 doing, 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.

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).

The self-examiner guards against tendencies to conform to unchallenged dogmas, age-old
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. 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.

Self-examination instills in us both a humility and efficacy; we are aware of our fallibility and fragility, but also of our strength and purpose. Self-examination instructs us, through constructive analysis and argument, how to live a 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? Do we have an ethical obligation to future generations of life?

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.

Notes

1. Literally common sense, the phrase denotes not only widespread belief, but more widely a shared sensibility.

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.

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”) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785

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”. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” 1784 Berlincshe Monatsschrift.

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. The Healthy Brain Initiative: A National Public Road Map to Maintaining Cognitive Health. (Alzheimer’s Association, 2008).

6. Some commercial advertising distracts and deceives consumers, and has an interest in keeping the public as uninformed as possible.

7. M. Silliman, Sentience and Sensibility, (Parmenides Publishing, 2006) 66.

Keane S. Lundt is a student at MCLA

2. Sociolinguistic Lessons for the Language Classroom

Louis E. Stelling

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. 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.

The informants who interested me the most can be divided into three groups. 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. 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. The third group understood French perfectly but struggled with limited productive skills throughout the conversation. However, they were happy to do so and reportedly made similar efforts to use the language with others.

It occurred to me that the first two scenarios lead to a diminished use of French. For group one, this was due to the notion of impracticality. These speakers simply saw no use for French in their community. The language went unused by members of group two because of linguistic insecurity. 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. Of the three groups, the third was the only one whose members promoted the use of French. A positive attitude towards their mother tongue led these consultants to use it with others. 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.

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. Educators must help students to see the language as practical and useful. 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. As such, we must not confuse linguistic proficiency or communicative ability with strict adherence to prescriptive norms. Our first priority must be to encourage students to use the language both inside and outside of the classroom.

Franco-American French has an undeserved reputation for being a kind of slang which is therefore unacceptable at school. 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 moi (‘me’). This is also the case for vocabulary such as the use of English borrowings (e.g. bines from ‘beans’) and archaic words like char or machine in lieu of automobile or voiture (‘car’). With respect to grammar, structures such as the use of avoir (rather than être) to form the past tense of certain intransitive verbs are simply labeled as incorrect.

Stelling (2006) demonstrates that there exists a cyclical relationship between schooling and Franco-American French which can be resumed as follows: 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. 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. 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. These negative views were imparted on Franco-American students themselves, which led to further abandonment of French.

In a healthy or stable cycle, schooling would encourage positive language attitudes that would in turn promote language maintenance and transmission. This would then justify more educational opportunities in the language, and so forth and so on.

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. 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.

Additionally, educators must be devoted to developing healthy attitudes among all language learners. We must stress that knowledge of a second language is a practical asset in the modern world. 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.

References

Brault, Gérard J. 1979. “Le français en Nouvelle-Angleterre.” In Albert Valdman (Ed.) Le Français hors de France. Paris: Champion. 75-92.

Fox, Cynthia A. 2007. “Franco-American Voices: French in the Northeastern United States Today.” The French Review. 80.6. 1278-1292.

Fox, Cynthia, Geneviève Fortin, Véronique Martin and Louis Stelling. 2007. “L’Identité franco-américaine: tendances actuelles dans le sud de la Nouvelle-Angleterre.” Canadian Review of American Studies. 37.1. 23-48.

Fox, Cynthia and Jane Smith. 2005. La situation du français franco-américain: aspects linguistiques et sociolinguistiques. In Albert Valdman, Julie Auger and Deborah Piston-Halton (Eds.) Le français en Amérique du Nord. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. 117-142.

Roby, Yves. 2000. Les Franco-Américains de la Nouvelle-Angleterre: Rêves et réalités. Sillery: Septentrion.

Stelling, Louis. 2006. “‘Non-Standard’ Variation and the Language Classroom: Some Lessons from Franco-American French.” Paper Presented at the LLCP conference. University at Albany, State University of New York

Notes

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. 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). In this article, the term Franco-American refers to French Canadian immigrants and their descendants living in the Northeastern United States.

2. Led by Cynthia Fox (University at Albany) and Jane Smith (University of Maine, Orono), A Sociolinguistic Investigation of Franco-American French was the first and only large scale investigation of French in New England. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation from 2001 to 2004. 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. 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. A translation task (English to French) was also used to elicit structures which are infrequent in conversation. For more information, see Fox and Smith (2005).

Louis E. Stelling teaches Languages at MCLA

3. Socrates’ Body and Soul

Benjamin Hollows

In Phaedo, 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. Why would Socrates, or anyone, want to separate the soul from the body, especially during one’s life in a body?

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. 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. 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. Therefore, one must not be vulnerable to confusing bodily desires, and use pure reason alone (turning inward toward the soul) to access the truth. 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.

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).

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. 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).

Socrates does not say to just practice philosophy, but to practice philosophy the “right way”. By this he seems to mean the cultivation of virtue in the pursuit of truth. In Meno, 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. 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. Therefore virtue is the wisdom to use a means rightfully so to be beneficial, and attain the good. The soul must be directed by virtue to achieve what is most beneficial, ultimately, the separation from the body (5).

Though Socrates says one must practice the separation of the soul from the body during life, is this realistic or actually beneficial? The soul, using the body as a vehicle, needs the body to purify itself. 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. 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. 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.

Even if the soul is not eternal and dissipates upon death, Socrates argues in Phaedo 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. And even for Socrates, it would have taken much labor to cultivate his soul and keep his daimonion ever present.

Notes

1. Plato, Phaedo, trans. G.M.A Grube. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), p.101-64a

2. Ibid p.104-67a

3. Plato, Phaedo, trans. G.M.A Grube. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), p.120-81d

4. Ibid. p.119-81a

5. Plato, Meno, trans. G.M.A Grube. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), p.80,81-87d-89a

Benjamin Hollows is a student at MCLA

4. The Way of Objectivity

Daniel Sadlocha

Immanuel Kant once posited that, due to the subjective nature of the mind, it is impossible to know anything in and of itself. 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. I am purposing that this is untrue.

It is true that human experience is subjective in almost all aspects. We perceive colors, which are only fractions of what light itself truly is. 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. We hear sounds, but, as sounds are wavelengths contained within pressure, temperature, space, etc., we can only hear a sound as an individual experience. 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. We cannot hear the wavelength in full, because our eardrums are not equipped for such a task. They are a method of filtering the wavelength into a perceivable interpretation. 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.

Within the bounds of our senses, I must agree, the absolute, the thing in-and-of itself cannot be objectively experienced. 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.

Sense, itself, however, is real. If one retracts from the sensual object itself and experiences smelling, rather than smelling an apple, one interacts with a very real experience. The same can be said for taste. 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. It is the experience of the sense itself.

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. One exclaims “I taste,” or “I see,” and even here we find that meaning is lacking. The subjective mind requires attachment in order to communicate the essence of experience, which is why the objective can never be written in words. Therefore, the listening wishes to hear “I taste a peach,” or “I see a bear.” 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’. The encompassing “I am” that the mind postulates to itself in order to exist and continue existing. Even the “I” is not objective, because it, in its very essence, describes subjectivity. It is “I” and not “You.” Therefore, it is still subjective.

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. This experience is indescribable because it lacks the grounding of the “I” and is not transmittable to the “You.” Therefore, I purpose that it is possible to experience the objective, but “I” or “You” cannot experience it. It can only be experienced, and in no way that can be communicated directly through words.

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.

Daniel Sadlocha is a student at MCLA

5. A Cup of Coffee Refused at Peter’s Place

Derek Anderson

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.
“Out,” he says quietly, neither angry nor impatient, just matter-of-fact. “I don’t serve your kind here.”
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.
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.
“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.
“Fine,” he says, wiping the counter and looking up at me.
“Why won’t you serve me a coffee?” I ask.
“Irrelevant. It’s my choice, it’s my establishment, and I’m asking you to leave.”
“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.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” he says, with dispassionate patience.
“I’d prefer to know why you think it is.”
“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.”
“So inherent in our rights, then,” I say, “is the ability to choose unjustly.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I believe it does.”
“Let me try an experiment, then,” I say.
He’s rubbing a mug clean, and frowns at me.
“I’ll try to make it quick,” I say. “But perhaps a coffee while I wait?”
His frown persists. I was joking.
“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.”
“We’d all kill each other.”
“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.”
“Alright.”
“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.”
“Fine.”
“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?”
“Try and save the person, as long as I can avoid getting murdered.”
“A fine answer,” I say. “I think I’d choose the same. In that situation, why would you act as you chose?”
“It’s my obligation. No one should be murdered.”
“We have a right to be alive.”
“Precisely.”
“A right that overrules our right to choose whether or not to murder.”
“I know what you’re doing here. You can’t foist a poor comparison on me. These situations are not the same.”
“I am well aware. I told you, we’re starting big.”
He doesn’t say anything, just pulls more mugs from beneath the counter and cleans them. But he listens.
“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.”
“No one deserves to be assaulted.”
“Do you step in?”
“I’m not certain it’s my responsibility. People need to settle things on their own.”
“Even through violence?”
“Are you expecting me to break up every fight in town?”
“No. But you think they’re wrong, right?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So are you going to break up every fight you see, on the grounds that no one should be physically assaulted?”
“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.”
“Exactly. Keep your nose out.”
“So do we give everyone the right to hurt each other?”
“If the other guy doesn’t care, what right is it of yours?”
“Okay,” I say. “A fair point. But I’m paying attention to that line. Let’s move on to the other scenario.”
“The verbal assault? No. Free speech is the greatest thing about this country.”
“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?”
“Nothing. What are you suggesting, Mr. P.C., that we go around censoring ourselves?”
“Absolutely not.”
“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?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“Then my answer is no. That right should not be taken away.”
“And in the situation we discussed?”
“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.”
“Particularly not for being the way they are, having done nothing wrong.”
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.
“No one deserves to be shut up,” he says. “Never leads to anything good.”
“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.”
“Absolutely.”
“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.”
“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.”
“But in the first case, you didn’t feel it was the murderer’s right to take a life.”
“Of course. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.”
“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.”
“Correct. We all deserve protection.”
“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.”
He thinks about it for awhile, more patient than I might have been in his shoes.
“I suppose it’s whether or not someone’s being hurt, or merely shortchanged.”
“You mean just physical hurt?”
“Not necessarily. But there’s a line.”
“Certainly.”
“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.”
“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?”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “Explain.”
“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.”
“No. I’m not serving you for that reason.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“What do you mean?”
“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.”
“You’re getting murky now.”
“I have to,” I say. “I think our situation is morally murky. When you move away from easy things like death, everything gets that way.”
“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.”
“I feel as if it’s ironic for you to say that.”
“Not really.”
“Well, you mentioned fairness. That everyone should get similar opportunities.”
“To an extent. Fair to exactly the place you keep mentioning—until it steps on other people’s toes.”
“So whose toes are getting stepped on in our situation?”
“Yours,” he says, unabashedly. “But the same as the person getting hollered at. In defense of a liberty.”
“I’m confused. You didn’t agree with my being shunned.”
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.
“What’s freedom?” I ask. “Is it just the right to choose wrong?”
“There’s not just right and wrong,” he says. “Freedom is having choices.”
“But morality’s weird, right? It limits those choices.”
“I don’t know if that’s weird.”
“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?”
“Maybe.”
“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.”
“I guess it can feel that way. Doesn’t have to.”
“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.”
“The ability to choose them makes us free.”
“Does it?”
He cleans his mug. I’m not sure either, so I keep talking.
“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?”
“Otherwise we wouldn’t be free at all. Morality would have no bearing.”
“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.”
“You haven’t convinced me it’s not my right not to serve you coffee,” he says.
“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.”
“Exactly.”
“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?”
He puts down the mug and looks at me for only a few seconds.
“What’s the difference?”
I smile. “I don’t know if there is one.”
I really don’t. I’m not being rhetorical—it doesn’t even feel like a good epiphany at the time.
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.”
“Is that wrong?”
“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.”
“I didn’t give you a coffee,” he says, pushing the money back at me.
“That’s for yours,” I say, and leave Peter’s Place satisfied.

Derek Anderson is a student at MCLA

Volume 16.1

2008-12-12T04:57:00.000-08:00

Contents:

1. Matthew R. Silliman, "What Makes Honors Students Honorable?"
2. Gerol Petruzella, "You Want Me to Do What? Research, Graduate School, and Real Life"
3. Jessica Dennis, "Hume on Miracles"
4. Carolyn Cook, "A Baboon's Role in the Evolution of Language"

1. What Makes Honors Students Honorable?

Matthew R. Silliman

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.

Accomplished honors students are:

· Fearlessly communicative. 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.

· Active readers 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.

· Thoughtful persons. 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.

· Critical thinkers. 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.

· Creative risk-takers. 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.

· Committed writers. 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.

· Members of a learned community. Honors students seek to belong to a socially engaged, politically aware (and tolerant), and expansively inclusive group of intellectuals.

Matthew R. Silliman teaches Philosophy and Co-Directs the Honors Program at MCLA
__________

2. "You Want Me to do What? Research, Graduate School, and Real Life"

Gerol Petruzella

The title of these remarks was my rhetorical response the first time someone suggested that I consider doing graduate research. It was also my response at various points during my graduate life, as I came upon new and surprising aspects of what I’d gotten myself into. I chose to 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.

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 after 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.

With advice from professors, friends and family, I decided to enter a Ph.D. program in philosophy. This decision felt good. I had a picture in my mind of what grad school would be like, and it was exactly where I saw myself: 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 feeling 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 intensity 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 Memorabilia. 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 what?” And I found I didn’t have an easy answer.

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 Nicomachean Ethics, 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 the defining world events of a generation. And they were not setting aside their ‘academic’ work to address contemporary events: they were doing philosophy, using precisely the knowledge and skills of their research and teaching to be relevant and effective participants in the ‘real world’.

And so eventually I came to further refine my understanding of the relevance of graduate study to my life. I realized that I had to make something of my studies. If I waited for a seminar or thesis topic to appear that somehow made 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.

He rejected it. He told me not simply to re-write it, but to re-focus my whole project.

You want me to what?

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: 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, everyone gets intimately acquainted with failure. Being successful in research must 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: that is, finding ways to continue to pursue your own research program, even while adapting your work to your advisor’s advice and direction.

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 eudaimonistic ethics. 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 useful type of research; but someone can admit that, but still call it morally wrong. 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 material prosperity to be essential for true success in life. Now, the Greek term that translates both ‘ethical life’ and ‘successful life’ is eudaimonia, 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 prerequisite 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: 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.

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.

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.

As for being sneaky: 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 eudaimonia 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.

So now, here I am. I’ve made it through graduate school, and my junk mail now comes addressed to DR. 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 eudaimonia 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 eudaimonia – 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.

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.

When I was first confronted with the suggestion to pursue graduate-level research, my response was “You want me to what?” For what should I commit yet another large chunk of my life to study? My own answer came through both my studies and 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, perhaps 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 20th-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.” Sounds like philosophy to me!
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3. Hume on Miracles

Jessica Dennis

One chapter of David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 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 out of line with the rest of his thinking as one might assume at first glance.

In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 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 they also notice that the fire gives off heat. The same person will experience that connection many times over the course of their life, and they will expect that connection to continue based on custom.

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: if I light a match, the flame will give off heat. These inferences are not always true, 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.

In the chapter “Of Miracles” Hume paints a somewhat contradictory picture of human knowledge and reason. He defines a miracle as anything that goes against the laws of nature. In order for the miracle to be considered such, 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.

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.

The reasoning in “Of Miracles” does not fit with the rest of Hume’s work. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume says 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.

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 the fact that Hume said that no good would come from excessive skepticism. He believed 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.

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.

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 is saying that miracles are possible, but that does not mean that we should believe everything we hear.

I would like to read Locke in moral terms: 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 sole 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.[1] 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"[2] 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. 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.

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.

Jessica Dennis is a student at MCLA
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4. A Baboon’s Role in the Evolution of Language

Carolyn Cook

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.

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. (Bergman, et al.)

Baboons are Old World monkeys that 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. (Worden; Seyfarth, et al.)

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. (Hespos, et al)

Carolyn Cook is a student at MCLA

References

Bergman, T.J., Beehner, J.C., Cheney, D.L. & Seyfarth, R.M. Science 302, 1234-1236 (2003).

R. Worden, The evolution of language from social intelligence. In: J.R. Hurford et al., Editors, Approaches to the Evolution of Language, Cambridge University Press (1998), pp. 148–168.

R.M. Seyfarth and D.L. Cheney, The structure of social knowledge in monkeys. In: F. de Waal and P. Tyack, Editors, Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and Individualized Societies, Harvard University Press (2003), pp. 207–229.

S.J. Hespos and E. Spelke, Conceptual precursors to language, Nature 430 (2004), pp. 453–456).
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(notes to Petruzella)

[1] Second Treatise of Government Chap. XI Sec. 134 " The great end of men's entering into society , being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety."
[2] Ibid. 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."