Ethics: Hume's Sentiments

Primary Reading: David Hume, "Morality Is Based on Sentiment," in James White's, "Contemporary Moral Problems."

Hume doesn't believe in absolute morals, although Hume never really believed in believing either. So that seems like a good place to start this post.

Hume argues that actions are not good or bad factually. It may be a fact that B cheated on S with R but there is nothing morally factual about B's actions (although she is a C.) It is only S's sentiments towards B's actions that make them wrong, as well as R's sentiments towards B's actions that probably also make them wrong but he is sort of a wimp anyways so he doesn't matter. Anyways, It is only factual that S feels like B committed a morally wrong action.

Now, this spits in the face of just about every other moral system. Utilitarians do not believe in absolute morals but they do live by the Greatest Happiness principle. They will show negative sentiments towards a greedy King, denying his people a moderate amount of happiness and forcing them to suffer so that he may live extravagantly. A Utilitarians sentiments lie in the Greatest Happiness principle, so it will be factual that they disapprove of the Kings actions but the actions in themselves are have no objective moral factuality. For a Universalist (i.e., someone who follows the Categorical Imperative,) the rule of thumb is to use the Law of Reciprocity. Essentially it is to act towards other people in a way that you would want them to act if your roles were reversed, which basically rules out murder, rape, lying, stealing, suicide... it's a really good list and a damn good moral system. However, this is perfectly set up for Hume as it is only your sentiment towards an action that makes it right or wrong. Universalism is great at making the subjective into an objective rule, but it is only objective insomuch as there is a subjective agent to create the action to begin with. That original subjective action is based on the sentiments of the agent, making it applicable to Hume's accusation.

You may be saying to yourself, "why aren't more people happy to call themselves Humean's if this theory is so great?" Well, that is because Hume says nothing about what to DO. This is great at classifying other moral theories, but says nothing itself about morals other than the fact that people care about certain things. What those things are depend entirely on the agent, but Hume gives no account of when it is ok to lie, or even if lying itself is a moral action. Realistically, this is not a moral theory, but a meta-ethical stance, looking at how we go about morals. Accepting it or denying it will not change the fact that you will adopt a moral theory (hopefully universalism... just saying.)

10 Second Version: Hume is kind of a douche. There are not absolute moral facts, just the fact that we feel for certain actions more so than others. This tells you nothing about what to do though. DO A BARREL ROLL!

Steve

Ethics: Cultural Relativity

Primary Source: Mary Midgley's, "Trying Out One's New Sword," in James White's, "Contemporary Moral Problems."

Cultural relativity is not so much a philosophical claim as it is an anthropologistic claim. As anyone who has ventured beyond the range of their own town is well aware of, different cultures have different sets of norms, standards, and, most importantly, morals. As I think I discussed earlier, morality is merely how humans interact with other living or sentient organisms (God help us when the Earth itself becomes sentient because we will all get wasted, and not in the good way.) I personally don't believe an absolute moral exists, but as society evolves certain morals come about to preserve those in societies. Of course, different regions of the world will have different morals come about. The claim of cultural relativism is that no person from any culture may criticize or judge any other culture.

Sam grew up in the "Bible Belt" of America, whereas Ben grew up in a cannibalistic tribe in New Guinea. Sam may never criticize Ben for eating people since Sam did not grow up in the same society, making Sam completely incapable of understanding that culture and vice versa. No matter how long either of them spends in the other culture, they will never TRULY understand it or adopt it without their old culture interfering with their understanding the new one.

There are some major fallacies here that can be summed up in a single question; how many people do you know that have lived in the same country as you but have completely different viewpoints on certain morals? Well, you must have grown up in different parts of the same town, so people from each different part can't understand/ criticize each other. Even in the same family, though, we see different morals being adopted. So maybe you just can't criticize anyone since no one grew up the way you did, and vice versa... So cultural relativism is completely self-defeating.

10 Second Version: Don't be a cultural relativist, but if you are, I can't criticize you since you aren't me. If I became a cultural relativist, though, I could criticize myself.... maybe.

Steve

Time Travel: David Lewis On Time-States and States of Affairs

Primary Source: "The Paradoxes of Time Travel," by David Lewis

I started this summary ten years from now... It took a while, ok? The good news is that I reach 1032 posts. The bad news is that I only have 941 views :\ also, emoticons are still used in the future :)

There are two types of timelines; External Time, which is the objective time in which we are all caught up in and which binds us together, and Personal Time, which is how we experience external time. External Time is absolute and affects everyone that is in its state of affairs. A cannot come after B, nor can C come before B; all things happen in causality. Personal Time, on the other hand, is able to loop behind, over, and around itself. Personal Time is bound to External Time but only in the sense that the former must happen in the course of the latter. Both focus on states of affairs (how things are arranged at any given moment) and the sets of facts about what is possible during each state of affairs... That was a little heavy philosophically.

Imagine a past relationship you had, and also that you are a guy since I am writing this from my point-of-view. External Time is the account of all the people involved in that relationship from the time you are introduced to the time she cheats on her boyfriend with you to the time she leaves you for that same douche. This is a completely causal relationship wherein your combined actions of texting each other leads to your relationship and her ex being a douchebag leads to her dumping him for the second time. Personal Time is your own experience within that External account, from the time she tells you she loves you to the point where you want to kill yourself since you don't know how to live without her.

In the earlier state of affairs, you are best friends and it is entirely possible for you to be in a relationship given all logical possibilities at the time, but, since it is in the past Externally, you know that is not a fact since she was dating that over-controlling douche. It is also true in the External account that she was cheating on you for a week before she broke up with you, since that is also in the External past.

That should be more understandable.

Now, the Personal account is your own experiences within this External account. They are not capable of changing the External past since that is the one that is affected by everyone and affects everyone. Personal Time really only comes into play when someone travels through time... WITH SCIENCE! I will write a later post about general problems associated with time travel, but for now we shall assume that zombie-Jesus has ordained it as being possible.

In the External account things have already happened, but when someone travels through time, forwards or backwards, they sort of "skip the record." When they go forward in time, it can be assumed that the External account simply goes on the same as though they had disappeared, and will continue to do so until the External point where they return. This isn't too hard to conceptualize and isn't very fun to write about since no real paradoxes happen, so I'm done with this part.

TRAVELING TO THE PAST, HOWEVER, yields quite a few perceived problems, but this is one time where Lewis and I will agree; that the 2009 Star Trek movie got it right. When a person travels backwards in the External account it seems like things should work out in such a way that it is logical for them to appear in the past (i.e., they go back in time to kill someone, end up betraying their original master, and are killed by their "past" self while saving the person they were meant to kill. Thus, the "past" self goes back in External time to repeat the circle.) The Personal account is bound to the External account in terms of possible states of affairs but not bound BY those affairs.

What this means is that whenever you go back in time, you create a new Personal Timeline within the External Timeline. You Alpha, the one that traveled backwards in time, and You Beta, the one that exists in the current External Timeline, are two completely different people with different Personal Timelines. They diverge at the time when You Alpha entered the External Timeline which You Beta resides in since You Alpha has experienced all of the things You Beta was supposed to experience in the future. Theoretically, as long as You Alpha does nothing to disrupt You Beta's experiences, You Beta will at some point in the External Timeline resurface at the same point as You Alpha... Again, this is very intense philosophically. Let's bash my ex some more to help you guys understand.

Steve Alpha catches his ex with some douche in a beret. For several months Steve Alpha is depressed and punishes himself. Several years later, Steve Alpha discovers a way to travel backwards in External Time. Steve Alpha decides to go to the day he became best friends with his ex. So Steve Alpha reverses the External Timeline to that point, but this does not make him the same Steve in External Time; Steve Alpha exists in the sense that he traveled to the past, but Steve Beta, the one that existed in the External Timeline at this moment STILL EXISTS. Steve Beta does not just disappear due to Steve Alpha traveling to this point. Essentially, Steve Alpha has jumped to a new branch of External Time, creating a new state of affairs simply by being there. Steve Alpha decides to beat the crap out of the douche with the beret to the point where he is in a coma, completely differing Steve Beta's Personal Timeline. Steve Alpha still has his own Personal timeline, but Steve Beta will not have the same Personal Timeline experiences as Steve Alpha did up to the point where Steve Alpha intervened. Steve Alpha could even make it so that Steve Beta does not even meet his"later to be" ex, preventing a lifetime of sadness and self-worth issues.

Steve Alpha and Steve Beta will not only have different Personal Timelines, but the External Timeline of Steve Alpha, and all of the possible states of affairs, are rewound to the point in External Time where Steve Alpha and Steve Beta are in the same External Time for the first time. Imagine listening to a song all the way though, then listening to the same song but it is completely different than it was before. That is the same way it works with time; the External Account is how the computer plays the song regardless of what is one it, whereas your Personal Account is how you hear the song every time you play it. It is this principle that makes the multiverse theory somewhat plausible, but I will argue that some other time (pun intended.)

10 Second Version: There are no paradoxes in time travel. You cannot change the past External Account in the present but you retain your Personal Account when you travel backwards in the External Account, making you capable of changing certain facts in the "new" External Account. My ex is a jerk. Time is hard.

Time is one of the hardest things to understand. I don't expect anyone to be able to understand it without extreme concentration and studying the subject for several months. Not even I, The Amazing Steve, was able to pick it up easily. I will continue to try to explain it as best I can and I encourage anyone genuinely interested in the topic to not give up. It really is just a matter of conceptualizing all of these crazy concepts. In retrospect, though, being able to understand it has been so fulfilling.

Steve

Same-Sex Marriage: A Philosophical Perspective

Philosophers have a long history of not taking the world's bullcrap excuses (See Immanuel Kant, W.K. Clifford) just as much as we have a long history of making up just as much bullcrap (See Thales, Anaximander, Descartes, Hume, Leibniz, Freud, Lewis, etc.) This entry is about the former, because when it comes to marriage, who better to ask than a bunch of single white men in coats?

*For the essay I will disregard any non-social arguments about the topic. You can believe what you want to, but for a society that is religiously free to function, religion must not be a factor in making the law. All things must be utilitarian in nature.

Both sides agree that marriage is meant to be not just a promise between two people, but a social acceptance and support of this union. Someone who is married is saying they will be exclusive to their partner in all ways, but the most often referenced way is sexually. It is safe to say that, as far as society is considered, marriage is a sex contract between two people AND that those two people will be exclusive to each other for the rest of their lives. It is important to mention that marriage allows for young people to satisfy their sexual urges in a safe, accepted manner with far less consequences than sex outside of marriage.

The Traditional Defense

The majority of defendants of traditional marriage focus on the biological aspect of sex. Men and women have sex to produce children. They see marriage as putting the round peg in the hole. Have you ever tried to put one peg into another? You're welcome for that mental image. There is a certain amount of merit to this argument; if all marriages were same-sex and, based on the societal contract that people in marriages remain sexually exclusive, then the human race would die out within a generation. This is only a hypothetical stuation as it is nearly impossible for EVERY marriage to be same-sex. There is a sort of nobility in defending the traditional definition since it shows you are worried about future generations and the advancement of our species.

The second argument from the traditionalists is that it is a slippery slope to allowing people to marry anything they want. For instance, read this story. If we allow people of the same sex to marry then people will start marrying toasters or the moon. Anything can marry anything! Like that story in the link I just posted....

For further reading in defense of marriage, see Maggie Gallagher's essay, "What Marriage Is For," as well as Jeff Jordan's essay, "Is It Wrong to Discriminate on the Basis of Homosexuality?"

The Equality Approach

People who argue for same-sex marriage to be allowed are focused on the individuals who are "in love." I personally don't believe in love anymore thanks to a very destructive relationship I had, but people who do still believe in love want those same-sex couples to receive all of the protections from the state for being married. They view the opposition to same-sex marriage as being just as ignorant as opposing inter-racial marriages. (Btw, remember the freak-out that happened over this commercial a few weeks ago?)

Marriage is meant to be a connecting tie between a couple, specifically in the legal realm. Take a gay man who goes into a coma after an accident. His partner will not have the same rights as a heterosexual man's wife would in the same situation. This is the main portion of the debate, in my opinion, that the progressives are interested in reforming. If you need an example of this, watch the movie, "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." Even if you don't, you should watch it anyways. Adam Sandler hasn't lost his touch yet, although "Click" and "Grown-ups" are terrible movies.

The second argument that progressives put forward is that homosexual partners are viewed differently than a married couple is in society. There are much stronger connotations with the term "married" than with the term "partners." I may have a girlfriend, but she can still cheat on me and break my heart, no matter how much in love we were. Unrelated. Not only does this reduce sexual promiscuity from the partners and people they interact with, but also makes people look at the couple more seriously. They aren't just dating anymore; they're married!

For further reading see David Boonin's essay, "Same-Sex Marriage and the Argument From Public Disagreement," and Jonathan Rauch's essay, "Who Needs Marriage?" You should really read Rauch just for the quotes.

So these are the basic arguments people make. As any philosopher will say, it is important to be able to view arguments from all sides in order to make the best decisions. If someone disagrees with you, they may just be ignorant or a douchebag, but they may just as likely have thought about their position for days on end. If you want to debate someone on this topic, remember one thing; you are not debating THEM, you are debating the IDEAS they put forth. We should be civil in these debates, because if we lose our humanity then nothing can be gained.

10 second version: Traditional, "Marriage is about the kids! And it's what the Bible says is right!" Progressives, "Marriage is about people being in LOVEEEEE! And tax breaks."

Steve

Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

In this post I will outline the abortion debate to the best of my ability, with the strengths and weaknesses of both sides fully exposed. I have an opinion on the debate but will remain unbiased (or doubly biased, depending on how well my cynicism comes out here) so that you may come to your own conclusion on the matter. All in all, I don't have a vagina and will never have to decide if I want an abortion. If I had my way this debate would be purely left for the women in the world since they are the ones who will make these decisions.

Pro-Life

The Pro-Lifers focus on the fetus. It is a generally accepted scientific fact that after about 10-12 weeks the fetus can feel pain, has human qualities, blah blah blah. Basically, pro-lifers equate a fetus to be equal to a human being, an INNOCENT human being to be exact. It has not sinn-- er, committed a crime. To be pro-life is literally to be pro-"the human should be allowed to mature to the point where it is able to live on its own." By having an abortion the mother would be killing an innocent human being with science. I get to see an aborted fetus every day that I drive to work thanks to an extremely religious fellow who owns a large sign on his lawn. This man also believes women should be silent in the church and that the media is biased, which, as we all know, only one of those two is true.

In all seriousness, though, the primary reason people go pro-life is to prevent "the genocide of a silent generation." (See "Every Pro-Lifer Ever," 82) They see the potential life of the fetus and claim that denying the fetus that opportunity is unforgivable. Look at how we act towards convicted murderers in society. We see them as dangerous, as having given up their rights in society for the lives they have stolen, for their immoral conduct towards their fellow humans. That is hoe pro-lifers view women who have had abortions and doctors who perform abortions. There is some weight to this point in that a potential human life is being denied. Think about when you were a helpless fetus, unaware of the world around you and completely subject to the will of others; would you want someone killing you before you had a chance to live? Pro-lifers strive to defend these helpless people so they have a chance at living. The only cases that are sometimes considered as exceptions are rape, circumstances where the baby threatens the mothers life, and very early on in the pregnancy (too early to even detect the pregnancy, really.)

This is where I finally get to reference the essay by Eugene Mills, "The Egg and I: Conception, Identity, and Abortion." I f*cking love this paper, not for what it says but because of the level of douchebaggery involved in its methodical destruction of well-formed arguments. Please read it if you get a chance. Here is the summary provided by James White in, "Contemporary Moral Problems," page 133;

"He argues that humans begin either before or after conception, but not at conception... An adult human being is either identical with the zygote in the mother's womb or else the adult is not identicle with the zygote but came into existence later."

Yo may be reading this and thinking, "Alright, so life begins a few weeks  or months after conception, so abortion could still be unethical when the baby starts to feel pain." I like you, and Mills likes you, so you can enjoy this next little bit.

If you decide to deny that proposition and say that life beings before conception, i.e. at the stage of an unfertilized egg, I say abortion is the least of your problems! By accepting this viewpoint you are saying that, ahem, EVERY EGG A FEMALE HUMAN BEING PRODUCES CONSTITUTES AS A PERSON WITH EMOTIONS, A SOUL, A FACE, A SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, AND A BUTT. EVERY GIRLS PERIOD THAT GOES UNFERTILIZED IS A MURDER. SINGLE WOMEN ARE MURDER FACTORIES. (I pray, beyond all odds, that The Oatmeal reads this and makes a comic about that last bit.) Yup! This can throw nearly every pro-life argument for a loop since almost all of them assume that life begins at conception. It general philosophical terms it is called "the problem of infinite regression," but it tends to be overlooked until a professional comes onto the debate scene.

The second, weaker, argument against pro-life is that those who support it are often only concerned with the child's birth. They do not bat an eye if he grows up poor, scared, malnourished, uneducated, etc. They only care that he is born. The stance should be renamed pro-birth. Being truly pro-life would involve feeding, clothing, educating, supporting, and loving him for his entire life, not just the point where he is expelled from his mother's womb.

The rest of the counter arguments to pro-life will be covered in the strengths of pro-choice. You think you pro-choicers are off the proverbial hook? No, no you are not.

Pro-Choice

Being pro-choice is to be focused on the mother. She is already alive and without question a member of the species. The baby she is carrying around is completely dependent on her for all of its needs until it comes out after 9 months. She has the final say on everything that happens to that baby (except for a miscarriage. She has no say in that... usually.) If the mother decides to get an abortion, no one can criticize her for it. As far as she should be concerned, until that baby comes out her  it is just a big growth, almost a parasite. If she doesn't want it then she should be allowed to get rid of it.

Now, assuming you don't think every egg is a person (love that paper) and life begins at some point well after conception, early abortions shouldn't be a major issue. The mother should be allowed to do what she wants with her body. The child is technically still a part of her body, so what makes an abortion any different than clipping toenails, or removing a wart? From the pro-choice viewpoint, there is very little to distinguish the three other than where on the body it is removed from and what tools are used.

Pro-choice makes a lot of sense to those of us who weren't aborted since we need to worry about ourselves, our needs, and our own futures. There is an analogy to a lifeboat regarding population control and the distribution of resources. It boils down to the realization that, if we were to try to give everyone the same quality of life then most people would die from being malnourished given that there are so very many humans on the planet. Secondly, it is important to think about the life the child will be born into. Would it really be ethical to birth a child into a life with an abusive parent, a missing father, a threatening environment, or any other extremely difficult situation? It is an act of mercy in the eyes of some to spare the unborn child from those experiences.

Is it truly mercy to kill someone to save them from suffering? Is that not a choice they should make themselves? Sure, they will have to scrap for food and sleep in the open, hoping that no ones kidnaps them while they sleep, but they should be allowed to take their own life if they so choose... wait, what? Anyways, this is the potential life we were talking about earlier. Even though we may not think they should be forced to live in harsh conditions, they should still be given the chance to do so. They may be born into a shaky family who later gets divorced, and they may be scarred for life from their over-religious parents and not fully understand why they aren't liked by anyone in their high school, but one day they could go to college and find the love of their life. Yes, they will dump that guy for some douche in a beret and probably be miserable with that douche because he believes in traditional gender roles and sees her as a trophy, but she should be ABLE to make those irreversible mistakes on her own... b*tch.

I lost my train of thought.

God, I hate my ex.

Anyways, it may be true that an abortion early on is viewed as acceptable by most parties (looking at you murder-machines), but that does not mean an abortion at the 8 month mark is just as acceptable. Take a house being built for a needy family. The house will take 9 months to build and will be very costly to those building it, but it will not be completely safe until it is complete. The family has just enough resources to last until it is complete though. The workers decide after 8 months that they can't put anymore resources towards it, and since it is unsafe that they are required to destroy it (which will not cost them anything for unexplainable reasons... science, why not science.) Because of this, the family will die terribly. WHAT!?!?>?

Any reasonable human being should see that late-term abortions are nearly equivocal with murder. Although, I still would not consider it to be murder since the baby is still completely dependent on the mother. Technically she cannot assault herself, but the fact that the potential life was so close to reaching fruition is something many people will see as morally unacceptable, if not an outright crime of some sort. I won't scream, "BABY MURDERER!," at them, but I will question their justification for it immensely.

So yeah, this post is much longer than I thought it would be, but that is the abortion debate in a nut shell. Yes, I missed some things and there are some loopholes I did not cover. You're a fairly smart adult if you've made it this far, or you're very good-looking. Either way, do your own research on the matter. Maybe when I get more hits per day I will revisit this post and make it better. Peace out bro.

Steve

Being Single

There are a lot of negative stereotypes in our society associated with being single. You're a freak, an outcast, high-standards, unattractive... the list goes on and on. It is a mark of negativity. It is just a bad thing to be single. To people who reinforce that belief, I object. Being single is not a bad thing, but a matter of luck essentially. In fact, it can only be a signifier of two possible  things; either a person was true to themselves and genuine to their character and happened to run into someone who magnified their personality as well as their mates personality was magnified by that person; OR they were desperate to fit into a rigid and destructive norm of this need to be in a relationship. Kinds of the latter are often highly destructive to both parties, resulting in an unfulfilled life and empty emotions based on duty. They are not focused on the people in the relationship but on the perceptions of those related to or involved with those in the relationship.

So often I see people wallow in their state of singleness, so eager to find that "only one" for them. First off, there are over 6 billion people on this planet. Even if you're like me and only want to date within your race, that still leaves quite a number of potential mates out there.  If you think there truly is only ONE person in the entire world who is right for you, then I must derive that you are both ignorant and foolish. You are not someone deserving of a relationship. This is not to say that if you do get married than you are not to keep your promise to that person. Once you decide to make a commitment to an individual based on mutual trust, respect, and love, you should uphold that promise. As far as finding someone to make that promise too, though, your options are very high.

In regards to the people who give into societal pressures to be in a relationship even though you are well-aware that, either, you do not know the other well enough to be in a relationship with them or that you are aware that they are not compatible with you but you decide to stay in that relationship anyways out of a fear of societal rejection, I feel a need to call you out. How dare you spit in the face of yourself. Do not let those around you control who you are. Do not let anyone decide how you live except for yourself. There is no need to succumb to will of others unless that is also your will. You must ask yourself whether or not you are truly happy with the person you are with. If you are, then you are not bowing into society, at least not for the reasons I an arguing against. But if you aren't, then you must decide if the acceptance of others is worth the price of your own happiness, your own free will, your own destiny. A critical evaluation of your life will likely prove that you are not, and it is to you and to those currently single that I proclaim a hope, a purpose, and a blessing in being single. You may be saying to yourself that you do not have a choice. There is always a choice. Look at Descartes; he had no choice in where to start given all of his current options, so he just threw away all of his options and started with nothingness. It was with this nothingness that he blossomed the majority of Western thinking. He was a human, just as you are.

There are plenty of things that single people can do that those in relationships cannot. I am not talking about hooking up with strangers at bars. I am talking about taking classes, exploring the world, bettering yourself, becoming a valuable member of your community. increasing your self-respect, gaining a peace within yourself, and understanding exactly who you are, what you desire, and what you need in your life. These are things that can only genuinely come from the self, from YOU. Allowing anyone else to decide your desires and your needs in the ultimate form of self-denial.

Being true to yourself is without question better than being what those around you want you to be. There is an old saying along the lines of, "No man is a failure who has friends." Bullsh*t. No man is a failure who is true to himself. The people around you are not of your own will but are there purely out of luck. You, however, you are always going to be with yourself. If you live  a life full of pain and regret, yet, are accepted by those  around you, will you truly be happy? Or would fulfilling your own dreams result in a higher degree of self-actualization than any outside force can bestow? If you answer the former, I cannot respect you. But if you answer the latter, know that it is not an easy journey. There will be rejection and there will be hardships, but you will be complete in time. One day you will look back at how weak you used to be and realize the transcendence you have achieved in taking the path less traveled. Realize that the people around you will always change, but if you are the person you want to be then that has little importance.

This is not a call to arms. This is a piece of wisdom, drunken babble, from someone who chose the latter who is midway through their struggle, babbling to an unknown audience. Take away what you can.

Steve

Ethics: Universalism/ Categorical Imperative

Primary Source: Immanuel Kant, "The Categorical Imperative," as published in James E. White's, "Contemporary Moral Problems", Tenth Edition, 2012

Quick Look

What is it?

Universalism is a rule-based ethical system. Every action a person takes creates a universal maxim , i.e., "All men at bars should lie to women to impress them." You as the individual are making decisions you would want everyone in your situation to make. The Categorical Imperative is, "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Strengths:

-Very black-and-white system of ethics

-Takes the subjective and turns it into an objective standard

-Forces a person to understand others viewpoints and take them into consideration for any action

-The individual takes all responsibility for their actions

Weaknesses:

-Can often lead to bad consequences ("Do I look fat in this dress?") 

-Depending on the person, a universal rule of "kill all _____" may be instantiated (See: Hitler)

-May be TOO encompassing as a moral system, as there are some morally neutral actions, i.e., buying a chocolate bar or brushing ones teeth 

Universalism, as I like to call it, is a rule-based ethical system. It is focused on an individuals actions and not the outcome of those actions. The categorical imperative (CI) relies on a single, and immediately known maxim as Kant say: "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." (White, 49) The great thing about universalism is that you only act in the way you want others to act, i.e. "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The CI sees every action as being moral, and every action requires an instantiation of some kind or another, which becomes a duty.

The first duty Kant arrives at under this rule is, of course, suicide. Not to commit it, but that it is never ok for anyone to commit suicide. If a person decides to kill themselves, then they are instantiating that everyone OUGHT to kill themselves as well.

The second duty is that a person should not lie. His example is that of a man in need of money to feed himself or buy meth. Something like that. He has a need is the main point. So he decides to take out a loan to purchase more meth knowing that he can never pay it back. What this meth addict is instantiating is, "Any time someone needs money to fulfill a need they have they should borrow money that they know they cannot pay back." If that were the case then a large number of people would be addicted to meth, and after a short period of time people would stop lending money. Capitalism would die, but sales of meth would go crazy.

The third duty which to Kant is also "immediately apparent" is that of using ones talents. Assume you have some talents, or something you're good at. Now, you have the opportunity to use those talents and work hard to make the world a better place, ORRR you can live a life "solely of idleness, indulgence, procreation, and, in a word, to enjoyment." (White, 50) Lets not fool ourselves; you pick the latter option. You immediately instantiate a universal maxim wherein all people who have natural skills should not use them to their fullest abilities but should live a life of mediocrity. Its like living in Walmart all the time. The obviousness of how wrong this scenario is should be readily apparent. Therefore, all people should utilize their natural skills to the best extent they are capable of doing.

There is a last bit about being a wealthy man (for my female readers, use your imagination) and seeing others around you in less fortunate situations, such as the meth addict. Basically you should give to the poor since they need hope and only you can give it to them. Be a nice person. Yeah.

The thing I love the most about universalism is that it is deontological, it adheres to a rule-based system. The question is not, "what will happen because of my actions?", but rather, "what actions am I taking and would I want others to take those same actions?" We can't know what our actions will bring about with certainty, and we cannot know what others will do. We are only in control of our own actions and we are only responsible for our own actions. This does land a universalist in hot water sometimes, though. For instance, say a mad-man carrying an axe comes to you and asks where your friend is so he can kill them. Clearly he wants to chop a tree down for them, right? A deontological perspective will force you to tell him the truth since you would want anyone in your position to tell the truth when asked a question. There is no reason why you should not lead him to the police station though, since you may also want to instantiate that any person who appears to be mad (crazy mad, not angry mad... maybe both) should be brought to the police immediately. So it is possible to subvert certain situations that seem like you are forced to create a situation with less than ideal circumstances.

Some people will use this work-around way of not breaking a maxim to pervert universalism. "I will that someone should only punch an ex-lovers new lover on this date at this time in this place," and it just so happens to be the place you are at. No. No no, no no no no. Universalism states that these maxims are in place FOR GOOD. They cannot be bound to a specific time or situation. If you don't want someone to lie at one time, they cannot lie at any time. If you don't want someone to do meth at one time, they cannot do meth at any time.

One last subject to touch on for this paper is that people must always be the end. You may use someone as a means to an end as long as they will also benefit from the end, or that their positive outcome in a situation is directly related to yours and they are willing to help you achieve it. So you can throw a sticky grenade at your friend in halo knowing that they have an overshield while they run into a group of enemies. Since you're both on the same team you earn points, making both you and your friend an end for your action. However, if you know your friend will die from the blast and they do not know you intend to kill them along with some enemies, then you are not permitted to throw the grenade onto them.

10 second version: Whatever you do you are instantiating it as a universal law for everyone to follow. Don't lie, don't kill yourself, be a nice person. Make people your end goal. Go Packers!

Steve

Ethics: Utilitarianism

Primary Source: John Stuart Mill, "Utilitarianism," 1861, as published in James E. White's, "Contemporary Moral Problems", Tenth Edition, 2012

A Quick Look

What is it?

Utilitarianism is an outcome-based morality focused on the "greatest happiness principle." This states that a morally good decision produces lots of happiness, or pleasure, and decreases pain, or displeasure.

Strengths:

-Highly adaptive to any situation

-Easy to understand

-Generally accepted outcomes, producing wide social acceptance

-Focused on "the greater good"

Weaknesses:

-Allows for any action to occur if and only if those actions lead to greater happiness

-Easy to manipulate and sometimes difficult to decide which choice will provide the most pleasure

-Due to the closure principle, the entire theory can fall apart given that it is impossible to know the exact outcome of our actions

-Vagueness of the greatest happiness principle can often lead to confusion about what it actually intends

Full Analysis:

Utilitarianism relies on the "greatest happiness principle." It is an outcome based ethical system wherein the most ethical actions are ones that cause the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. Now you may already be saying to yourself, "We have a lot of people with perfectly good organs out there, and plenty more people who need those organs. We could easily take 5 organs from one healthy person to greatly prolong the lives of 5 sick people!" We will get to that topic in just a moment.

The greatest happiness principle tends to be confusing for most people. "Does this mean we should just eat, drink, have sex, and ride roller-coasters all day, since that would make everyone ultra-happy?" Only someone who has not experienced those things enough would agree with that statement (although roller-coasters are really cool.) As the saying goes, "'tis better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." (I believe the saying goes on to say "But the pig turns into bacon, and bacon is delicious.")

Although primal needs should be satisfied to a point, the intellectual curiosities are far more valuable and can result in much greater unhappiness if left to atrophy for too long. For instance, think about a band you used to love, or an ex-lover who has since cheated on you. You used to love it, and would spend all day with it. You would listen to that band all the time, or constantly text that person. Then one day, you start skipping songs since its getting stale, or they don't reply to you for a few hours. Finally, you hit the point where if you hear that song again you're going to kill someone, and you find your now ex making out with some douche in a beret. No matter how good an animalistic pleasure is, you will either become desensitized to it after a while or it will break up with you even though you said you could forgive it. That is why the intellectual pleasures outweigh an excess of primal pleasures.

Now then, Mill  emphasized that the greatest happiness principle is living ones life as far from pain as possible and as rich in enjoyment as possible, both in quantity and quality. (White, 41) The only time it is ok to cause pain is when that pain will lead to more happiness than caused by the pain. In the case of the organs, that is not possible when done involuntarily. It is assumed that if killing someone requires a LOT of happiness to be a result, which may not be the case of the 5 people saved. This is distinctly different from the movie Seven Pounds, since *SPOILER ALERT* Will Smith sacrifices himself voluntarily to save others, because Will Smith is the man. Since Will does it to himself, it is his own moral choice to bring others happiness, which maximizes his own happiness and ridding him of the grief of the terrible deaths he caused.

The most obvious time utilitarian ethics comes into play is the retributive justice system we have here in America. We as a nation have decided that it is better to deprive an individual of pleasures and inflict mental pain (sometimes even physical pain) for a prolonged period of time. Some crimes are even worthy of killing the individual. There are some other schools of thought that allow this but more often than not the reasoning behind retributive justice is utility. We don't want them to cause anymore pain, and suppressing the convicts happiness will lead to more happiness for all non-convicts (more or less.) So that's why prisons exist.

Bringing about happiness and reducing pain is pretty agreeable, so why aren't more people utilitarians? Utilitarianism has a few inadequacies for its only rule. Firstly, that organ thing? Some people interpret it that if the man with the organs is homeless, hopeless, and shoeless, he SHOULD be killed to give his organs to the educated, wealthy, young, etc. Essentially, if you are worthless to society and bring about virtually no happiness then you lose your rights. All of them. At once. Until you bring about more happiness. Which may very well be by dieing.

Another reason for rejecting utilitarianism is that it often involves the lesser of two evils. A famous example is that of a tourist in a jungle stumbling upon a small militia about to kill a village by firing squad. The general of the militia is ecstatic that the visitor is there and, to celebrate his appearance, agrees that if the visitor kills only one of the villagers, the rest will be spared. You are to take on the viewpoint of the visitor, but sometimes I like to also take on the viewpoint of one of the trees. Anyways, utilitarianism states that you (as the visitor, not the tree) should kill the one person to save the others. That is to be the most ethical decision. Now, imagine being President of the U.S. when the decision had to be made to drop the bomb on Hiroshima in an effort to save over 1 million American troops that would die in an invasion of Japan. WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Well, if you were a utilitarian, you would drop the bomb. Literally.

My biggest qualm with utilitarianism is that it often involves the lesser of two evils in any action, but either way you are still choosing evil. That is a flaw with any outcome based ethical system. Sometimes it is a smart tool for decision making and it is easy for most people to understand. However, it fails in extreme circumstances and does not account for the fact that we cannot know for certain what the outcome of any action will be in actuality. We can predict with 90% certainty that it will be sunny tomorrow, but if it rains our picnic will be all wet.

10 second version: Make happiness, decrease pain. Being smart is better than sex. Don't kill people unless they're homeless. Shoot the villager, save the village. Nuke Japan to stop THE WAR.

Steve

Great (and higly credible!) Philosophy Databases

Hey everyone

In case you're wondering where I am getting some of my information from, here is a short list of great websites. If I haven't made something clear enough or you just want to do research of your own, check these out.

http://plato.stanford.edu/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/

http://www.philosophybro.com/
^this guy is like me, but he isn't doing it anymore. also, he is quite gangsta.

http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/the-philosophers-index
^this one is free for most college students, but not so free if you aren't one.

http://www.jstor.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwOCmJevigw
^this guy is smart, funny, Australian, and not me. if you want a REALLY concise summary on a handful of people, check him. its also hilarious.


I'll update this page as I find more websites.

Steve

Why Should I Care About Philosophy?

Almost everyday that I  walked through the halls of Boyer Academic building I would hear at least one person complain about their philosophy class. "It's just so difficult to understand!" "The teacher is saying things that clash with my own beliefs. I can't stand it." "All of this is conceptual. It doesn't apply to reality at all." I started college as a Criminal Justice major, wanting to become a detective and "clean up the streets" as they say. I took Intro to Philosophy my freshman year and was one of those people who complained about the class purely because it was so difficult. But when the semester ended, I was at a loss; this was the most eye-opening class I had ever taken! Sure, I couldn't understand most of what was going on, but a hunger had awoken inside me that wanted to know more and to understand it. Within a year I ended up switching to Philosophy and took every class I could on the subject (except Philosophy of Science, because science and I don't play well together.) I started to care about philosophy when I realized that it is the most important field of study for any individual to understand.



Why should you, the reader, the skeptic, the blank-slate, the viewer, CARE about philosophy? I don't intend to convince you that philosophy is THE most important field (if you're researching a cure for cancer, please don't stop to read Hume or Descartes) but I will try to give a concise argument on why philosophy is relevant to you, the modern person.

The most obvious category is ethics. Religious or non-religious, we all have ethics. As long as we live in a universe where there are other living creatures, we have to decide what is "good" and what is "bad" when interacting with others. For instance, it is almost universally accepted that torturing infants is bad, but torturing a terrorist for information about a bomb? That is an area of hot debate whether it is good or bad. If you want to live a decent life (and, if you intend to go into politics someday, have less problems with your inevitably dirty past) then you should know a bit about meta-ethics and different schools of ethics. There are the universalists (focused on an individuals actions), the utilitarians (focused on the perceived outcome of an action), the nihilists (focused on only their personal gain), etc. Knowing a persons ethical viewpoint, even if it is not your own, can turn-around an otherwise terrible situation.

Maybe you think philosophy doesn't matter in the same way that religion no longer matters. Science has become the undisputed king of explaining reality... right? Sorry to disappoint, but there are plenty of loopholes in current scientific thought that philosophers can easily take advantage of. For instance, the universe started with the big bang. This is generally accepted. But what came before the big bang? Well, maybe the universe is cyclical in its time, i.e. a big bang happens every time the last one ends. If so, then where did this cyclical universe come from? The universe could not have been created out of nothing unless we agree that something can come from nothing. Even if we assume that to be true despite its horrible flaws, we can still question just what is outside of our universe. This is just one of the problems modern science faces that few people ever address. You can bet I will post more than a few articles on this.

The last reason philosophy should be important to you, and the reason I have no regrets having taken it as a major, is logic. You may be saying, "I took differential equations. I know enough logic for the rest of my life." If that is true, then you must know modus tollens and modus ponens. If you actually DO know what those mean, congratulations! If not, you clearly don't know basic logic. Modus tollens states "if A then B", "not B", "therefore, not A", i.e., If jack did the dishes then the dishes are clean, the dishes are not clean, therefore, Jack did not do the dishes. Modus ponens states "if P then Q", "P", "therefore, Q", i.e., if Sam is hungry then she will eat a burrito, Sam is hungry, therefore, Sam will eat a burrito. There are plenty of rules of logic that apply to everyday life and plenty of reasons to study them. For instance, the dishes may have been clean but that does not mean Jack did them. A more extreme example would be "if the Christian Bible is true then God exists," "the Christian Bible is true," "therefore, God exists." If this isn't  one of the most highly debated arguments in the last two millennia then i don't know what is. Hey, that last sentence was a logical statement!



I hope this entry has shown you some reason why philosophy should matter to you. If you still aren't  convinced then try reading a few of my other entries. There will at least be a bunch of dirty jokes in them to keep you entertained.

Steve