https://zoeoverthinks.com Zoe Overthinks Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:27:46 +0000 https://zoeoverthinks.com en https://zoeoverthinks.com/Desktop Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:49:57 +0000 Zoe Overthinks https://zoeoverthinks.com/Desktop <img width="1024" height="1024" width_o="1024" height_o="1024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/70c62e57dc64fd3492f20d728e2b93c075ee223ce14445af8396b5109271ca44/globe.png" data-mid="171669391" border="0" alt="ZoeThinks.com" data-caption="ZoeThinks.com" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/70c62e57dc64fd3492f20d728e2b93c075ee223ce14445af8396b5109271ca44/globe.png" /> <img width="1786" height="2519" width_o="1786" height_o="2519" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ba1b83cf22bc125655271b6d0d4fec6682541f6027d29a2be32991245faeb270/IMG_0185.GIF" data-mid="171952958" border="0" alt="Is Death Bad for the One Who Dies?" data-caption="Is Death Bad for the One Who Dies?" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ba1b83cf22bc125655271b6d0d4fec6682541f6027d29a2be32991245faeb270/IMG_0185.GIF" /> <img width="640" height="635" width_o="640" height_o="635" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0c4704598ed86e5c57891848a3831f1576fc67f192b35e156435b8d57eb2a66c/littlegirlaminated24.gif" data-mid="171943403" border="0" alt="Reading, Writing... Philosophy" data-caption="Reading, Writing... Philosophy" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/640/i/0c4704598ed86e5c57891848a3831f1576fc67f192b35e156435b8d57eb2a66c/littlegirlaminated24.gif" /> <img width="943" height="887" width_o="943" height_o="887" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/36cbd40826d2f30874d851c56eed24a58d204aef7865aba1577831c1701ea192/Untitled_Artwork-11.gif" data-mid="171823796" border="0" alt="Is it Better to Be a Happy Pig or an Unhappy Socrates?" data-caption="Is it Better to Be a Happy Pig or an Unhappy Socrates?" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/943/i/36cbd40826d2f30874d851c56eed24a58d204aef7865aba1577831c1701ea192/Untitled_Artwork-11.gif" /> <img width="800" height="800" width_o="800" height_o="800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5977cfeb322a47cb3f6167accb46f7d91624cb41258e4802b8706520c30d3bae/mac.png" data-mid="171669380" border="0" alt="Info" data-caption="Info" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/800/i/5977cfeb322a47cb3f6167accb46f7d91624cb41258e4802b8706520c30d3bae/mac.png" /> <img width="600" height="600" width_o="600" height_o="600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7f941864842f07ae669a3ea08665d310fe98353853b6cbf065096b53c8e8912b/croppedwash-ezgif.com-effects.gif" data-mid="245646205" border="0" alt="Invisible (Disability) Work" data-caption="Invisible (Disability) Work" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/600/i/7f941864842f07ae669a3ea08665d310fe98353853b6cbf065096b53c8e8912b/croppedwash-ezgif.com-effects.gif" /> <img width="1620" height="850" width_o="1620" height_o="850" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/acf9b3b0bd6f3ba4a97f533c84a40cc8685f54844d13256d44ddab8de447af09/brain1.gif" data-mid="171859286" border="0" alt="Intuition in Meaning" data-caption="Intuition in Meaning" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/acf9b3b0bd6f3ba4a97f533c84a40cc8685f54844d13256d44ddab8de447af09/brain1.gif" /> https://zoeoverthinks.com/Info Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:49:58 +0000 Zoe Overthinks https://zoeoverthinks.com/Info Zoe Overthinks A place for philosophical musings and projects that exist outside the scope of my regular old portfolio website. You can read several of my philosophy papers on the home page. The way I structured them is the first half is setting up and explaining the argument a philosopher is making, and the second half is where I make it real spicy and add my own hot takes. Unfortunately there is no hot take without trudging through the background info first. &nbsp;Thanks to Suraj Barthy for inspiration for this website. https://zoeoverthinks.com/The-Value-of-Philosophy Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:49:58 +0000 Zoe Overthinks https://zoeoverthinks.com/The-Value-of-Philosophy <img width="625" height="420" width_o="625" height_o="420" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0b58e97e1985bb1a39da46301e888076d91db3c8605e26039ecbe857d65f87bc/ZoeFinalProgress.gif" data-mid="171840378" border="0" data-scale="35" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/625/i/0b58e97e1985bb1a39da46301e888076d91db3c8605e26039ecbe857d65f87bc/ZoeFinalProgress.gif" /> The Value of PhilosophyFINAL PAPER ON PHILOSOPHY IN THE SCHOOLS (PHITS) A PROGRAM WHERE PHILOSOPHY STUDENTS AT OBERLIN CREATE CURRICULUM AND TEACH FIRST AND SECOND GRADERS PHILOSOPHY JANUARY 2018 by Zoe Cohen At some point along the line in our philosophical musings about the point of existence, language, logic, our interactions with our environment, and so on, we must ask ourselves, what is the point of philosophy in the first place? It is easy to fall into the trap of nihilism when you think too hard about why we do anything, but especially so when asking yourself why you bother asking questions about asking questions. Measuring success in philosophy is not so simple and straightforward as in many other occupations or school subjects, if it is measurable at all. A doctor can tangibly identify how many patients they have cured, and an athlete can see improvement in their stats. In school, success in english class can be measured by words spelled correctly or reading comprehension. Success in math can be measured quite clearly because either the student produces the correct answer or they do not. Philosophy does not generally produce such clear, empirical data as do many other subjects. Because of this not so apparent virtue, the pursuit of philosophy is not of obvious value to the general public. The goal of this paper is to address philosopher Bertrand Russell’s explanation of why philosophy is worth teaching in his paper The Value of Philosophy through the lens of working with the students of Eastwood Elementary School. If Russell’s arguments are correct, people who incept social change are philosophers. If we compare Russell’s view to examples of the discussions of the Eastwood students, we can identify the value of philosophy among subjects like math and english in the school curriculum. The main question is, must someone have a full grasp on societal conventions in order to challenge and transcend them? PHITS stands for Philosophy in the Schools, and is a program in which students from Oberlin College worked with first and second grade classrooms once a week, with a philosophy curriculum based on several children’s books. Among those books were The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, A Bad Case of the Stripes, by David Shannon, ‘Dragons and Giants’ in Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel, Knuffle Bunny, by Mo Willems, and several others. As our class time progressed, it was clear that the students grasped the concept of dissent, as they often took the opportunity to say “I disagree” and, oftentimes without probing from facilitators, would provide an explanation to back up their statement. This is already a challenging concept to grasp because in the traditional school setting the lesson plans are not up for debate. In subjects like math and spelling, as Russell himself concurs, there is a definitive answer. In addition to telling the students it was good to disagree and they needed to give reasons for their opinions, we gave them several other guidelines for philosophy discussions. These included to be open minded, challenge yourself, ask “why?” and to encourage them to speak to each other instead of just addressing the facilitators, we had them call on each other by passing around a stuffed animal. To address whether the students engaged in philosophy in Russell’s view, let us first determine clear guidelines based on Russell’s definition of philosophical activity. It would be advantageous to discuss what the value of philosophy is not before taking on what it is. Philosophy is unlike the physical sciences because one person’s pursuit of a science can directly impact a large population of people who may be completely ignorant to such studies. For example, a vaccine can benefit exponentially more people than those involved in its development, and they need not know anything of the process of creating the vaccine nor the disease it protects them against to reap said benefit. Russell says that philosophy, on the other hand, has great impact on the the philosophy student, but any effect on other individuals is only indirect. I have some disagreement with this point, as will be discussed later. Another thing philosophy does not provide, to Russell, is any definitive answer. On the contrary, as soon as something can be definitively known it fails to qualify as philosophic. For example, the study of the human mind that used to be considered philosophy now belongs to the science of psychology. Also, the science of astronomy used to be categorized as philosophy. The value of philosophy can be found in its own uncertainty. (10) To not question one’s own beliefs is at best vain and at worst oppressive. As stated in the Socratic paradox, “The only thing I know, is that I know nothing." To break away from assumptions and common sense is to be liberated. Understanding that one has the ability to dissent and be skeptical of their own thoughts and the thoughts of others is the first step to achieving this liberation. As stated earlier, the Eastwood students dissented to a degree that Russell would be pleased with some topics and less so with others. Interestingly enough, one could gather which “life lessons” and “morals” had and had not been asserted to the children. As to be discussed further later, things like lying and hurting someone’s feelings were unanimously determined to be naughty and thus the discussions around them were less rich. An example of a moral that elementary school kids are not universally lectured on is the role of artists in society. This discussion came up after the reading of the book Frederick by Leo Lionni. In the story, there is a community of mice who are doing heavy lifting and walking back and forth from the fields to their den carrying supplies for winter while one mouse, Frederick, seemingly sits around with his eyes closed, doing nothing. When asked what he was doing by the other mice Frederick responds that he is collecting colors, sunlight, and words for the cold winter days. The other mice seem to accept this answer, and when the mice are huddled inside their hole during the winter, Frederick presumably is allowed as much food as the other mice. When they are out of food, it comes time for Frederick to offer his contribution to his community and he tells them a poem, which gives them joy. The first grade students were asked whether or not Frederick was doing work, to which they gave varied answers. Some students were adamant that Frederick was not working because, they said, only heavy lifting qualified as work. The same students, were probed whether this meant that they thought their teacher was working responded after some thought that no, what their teacher does would not qualify as work. It was plain to see what morals their parents and the school had and had not yet instilled into the children based on how open they were to disagreement and different points of view. As Russell describes, one major aspect of philosophy is to challenge information that we take for granted. He describes the situation of a person who never flirts with philosophy as “imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason.”(10) Such a person does not see the irony in criticising the ideals of past generations of humanity which are so confidently deemed erroneous in the modern day, while failing to be critical of their zeitgeist. For example, anyone today could say slavery is bad or that women deserve to vote but to say so requires little thinking of one’s own. These people cannot comprehend how people in the past could have accepted so readily the inferiority of women and people of color, yet they fail to question modern assumptions and beliefs. These are likely the same people that would have mindlessly and passively allowed such inequalities to persist. If we take what Russell says about philosophy to be true, it is the philosophers who failed to be lulled into accepting the zeitgeist at face value and challenged it to the point where they created social change. As Russell says, philosophy does not empirically tell us what is right, but it tells us what may be right, and also what is wrong. If we assess Russell’s breakdown of the value of philosophy, it appears he downplays the level of significance it can have. As stated earlier, Russell says that unlike science, philosophy generally only impacts the individual practicing such thought. However, based on Russell’s definition, should we assume it as true, we could claim that all people who create social change are engaging in philosophy. Teaching children not what to question, but how to question it, is how you create future leaders. Children are in the process of learning societies assumptions and preconceptions. This could take a children’s philosophy course in many different directions. It is possible that a child’s lack of assumptions makes it easier for them to open their mind and transcend beyond what a normal adult attempting to be sceptical of what they take as given can reach. On the other hand, they may not be ready to challenge these rules they are so newly acquainted with. What I observed in the children at Eastwood is that they had a difficult time challenging the rules they were just learning for the first time. Take, for example, our discussion with Mrs. Frieda’s first grade class about the book A Bad Case of the Stripes. In the book, a girl named Camilla Cream loves lima beans but does not eat them because she thinks she will be ostracized. As a result of this, she starts turning colors and morphing into shapes at the whims of the people around her. The kids in her class shout different colors at her and watch her skin go polka dotted and striped, and an environmental therapist tells her to pretend to be “one with [her] room” causing Camilla to literally turn into her room, with windows as eyes and a mattress for a mouth. Many specialists come to suggest their cure and each one only worsens Camilla’s condition, each leaving her less like a girl than the last one. Ultimately, the thing that turns her back into human is by eating lima beans. In our discussion with the kids, we primed the conversation to be one about identity and sense of self. We helped the students understand that the reason why lima beans cured her is because she was finally being true to herself and not pretending to be something she was not. The concept of being yourself was something all the students were familiar with. We asked why it was good to be yourself they responded with things that were mostly reiterations of the question itself. For example “you should be true to yourself because no one else is like you.”&nbsp; It was clear that adults had taught them that it is good to be true to yourself, but the explanation of why begs the question. This is one assumption that adults probably do not challenge themselves. In some cases it is better to not be yourself, especially when doing so can cause harm to others. Children are seldom taught the exceptions to rules, they are just given the rules alone and accept them as such into adulthood. In the same lesson, another word triggered the rules that the children had been taught. To deepen the discussion of being yourself we had the kids consider the following scenario: Imagine your friend bakes you a pie and is really proud of it. You go to take a bite of it and it tastes awful. Is it okay to pretend you like it so you don’t hurt their feelings? Would pretending to like it qualify as not being true to yourself? In response to these questions, the students seemed to lean towards pretending to like it to avoid hurting their friend’s feelings as being the right choice, having been taught that hurting someone’s feelings is a bad thing to do. However, at one point one of the facilitators used the word “lie” to describe the action of saying the pie was yummy. The use of the word “lie” clearly triggered a switch to be flipped in their heads and they all started to say that they would tell their friend the pie was bad. When asked why, their responses were along the lines of “because lying is bad.” Once the word “lie” was mentioned, the conversation shut down and most of the students would not agree to tell their friend the pie tasted good. When we restated “but your friend’s feelings will be hurt if you say it tastes bad” the children seemed to have a hard time processing it. These two rules that adults had repeated to them innumerable times could contradict themselves in certain scenarios. As Bertrand Russell argues, philosophy has much value to the individual studying it. If we feel it is important for children to understand that lying is bad, we cannot simply hope they accept it at face value with no other explanation beyond “because I said so.” If we avoid teaching children philosophy out of fear that they will disobey we deprive them of expanding their thoughts and breaking away from the “tyranny of custom.” (10) It is one thing for a kid to tell the truth because mom will get mad if she finds out they lied, but this is not true understanding. To truly grasp why something is bad, one must flirt with the possibility that it is not bad, before rebuilding it and coming up with their own explanation as to why they do not want to lie. A child who learns to question societal norms becomes an adult who can question codified injustices and inequalities. As witnessed in class with the Eastwood students, it is important to, among the laws of math and rules of english, allow for them to learn philosophy: So that they may decide within themselves what is important to them, and how they would like to conduct their lives. https://zoeoverthinks.com/Judging-Judges-Who-Decides-What-Pleasures-are-Superior Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:27:46 +0000 Zoe Overthinks https://zoeoverthinks.com/Judging-Judges-Who-Decides-What-Pleasures-are-Superior <img width="943" height="887" width_o="943" height_o="887" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/36cbd40826d2f30874d851c56eed24a58d204aef7865aba1577831c1701ea192/Untitled_Artwork-11.gif" data-mid="171837205" border="0" data-scale="27" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/943/i/36cbd40826d2f30874d851c56eed24a58d204aef7865aba1577831c1701ea192/Untitled_Artwork-11.gif" />Judging Judges: Who Decides What Pleasures are Superior?Or, is it better to be a satisfied pig or an unsatisfied Socrates? A DISCUSSION OF JOHN STUART MILL’S CONCEPTION OF UTILITARIANISM AND WHETHER ANYONE WOULD BE QUALIFIED TO JUDGE WHICH ARE HIGHER ORDER AND WHICH ARE LOWER ORDER PLEASURES BASED ON HIS OWN REASONING. MAY 2018by Zoe Cohen Utilitarianism is a system of judging the morality of actions based on their proclivity to create pleasure or lessen pain. The father of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, called utility “the greatest happiness principle” because it describes maximizing the net pleasure for all sentient beings involved. While Bentham generally thought of all pleasures as equal, his successor, John Stuart Mill, in his paper Utilitarianism, discriminates between what he describes as higher pleasures and lower pleasures. This definition of good, being only that which maximizes net pleasure and minimizes pain, often overlooks other factors. The theory is often met with the criticism that it defies justice by implying that, for example, a situation in which an innocent man being executed so as not to incite public panic would be morally sound. Mill’s theory helps alleviate some of that tension by qualifying certain pleasures over others. One issue upfront is that many people seemingly choose low pleasures over high. If people are frequently and willingly opting for lower or worse pleasures, one cannot claim that what their parameters for what qualifies as higher and better are correct. It is not uncommon for a person who enjoyed the higher order pleasures like engaging in lively debate or writing a philosophy paper to resort to a life of these so called “lower pleasures” which include activities such as doing drugs, having sex, or perhaps binge watching the entirety of a show on Netflix. This paper will examine further Mill’s statement and justifications that no one capable of experiencing higher order pleasures would elect a life of lower pleasures instead, and whether those that do live lower lives are disqualified from judging which pleasures are better. Mill addresses several criticisms of classical utilitarianism with this next evolution. For example, the Epicureans said that pleasure based judgements of morality make humans no better than swine. Mill’s famous thesis statement is: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (47). He declares here that value is not simply about net sum of pleasure, but rather how pleasure can be ranked in a hierarchy. Mill concedes that we are capable of experiencing the same pleasures as pigs and all other non-human animals: that of sexual satisfaction or a satiating meal. But humans are also able to engage in much higher activities that give pleasure such as learning or morality, the latter being important for our purposes. As we know, acceptable activity for animals is unacceptable by human standards: Rape, eating our own young, et cetera. Humans must have desires beyond that of carnal satisfaction, because if we were driven just by pleasure our behavior would resemble that of lower animals. Mill makes some alterations to Bentham’s original conception of utilitarianism but states that the basic premise still remains: Pleasure and the absence of pain are the only thing that can be desirable as ends, and any desirable things are so because of their link to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain (45). If an object is visible, by definition it must be able to be seen, if a sound is audible someone must be able to hear it, and the only way for something to be desirable is for people to actually desire it. He says it is not necessary to justify that happiness is desirable beyond the fact that all people desire it. Next, Mill wants to address an objection to utilitarianism that people desire things other than just happiness, suggesting happiness and pleasure is not the only end. This objection is also relevant to the story of the wrongfully convicted person brought up earlier. The wrongfully convicted person serves as an objection to utilitarianism because, by Bentham’s definition, executing the man would please the community at large and the pleasure in all these people outweighs the pain and suffering endured by the prisoner. It is a fair assumption to make that most people are uncomfortable with that and recognize the years lost by the wrongfully convicted is a miscarriage of justice and a tragedy. Thus, suggesting pleasure cannot be the only end. Mill wants to appeal to this sensibility and find a way to show that happiness not only lives alongside justice and virtue, but is the entire goal of these qualities in the first place. To do this, he says that virtue is a means that we mistake for an end (54). Virtue is not an alternative to happiness, but a means to it. He compares our mistaken ideas of virtue to the love of money: The actual physical form has arbitrary worth. There is no inherent worth in the paper representing it nor is there first-degree pleasure to be gained from looking at a number representing your bank account. We have come to associate money with the pleasures it can give us, mistakenly thinking we desire money in and of itself. In reality, money is just a way to facilitate the happiness we ultimately get from the feeling of security or fun activities. We mistake virtue and morality as an end to achieve for its own sake rather than a vehicle by which to experience happiness. Thus, virtue does lead to happiness just like money leads to happiness. This is where Mill’s higher order pleasures come in. Though the townspeople might feel animalistic satisfaction if the man were wrongly executed, knowing the man is innocent, we would be happier if he were to be let free. The more virtuous outcome wins because the lower order pleasure of animalistic desire is outweighed by the higher pleasure of securing justice. Summarizing what Mill has proven this far: Nothing is desired but happiness, and we choose things like justice and virtue not because they operate outside of pleasure but because they are on a higher tier of pleasure along with intellectual pursuits and creative imagination. This ability to engage in higher order pleasures explains why we would choose to be sad Socrates instead of the satisfied pig, and how not executing the prisoner might produce a lower quantity of pleasure but a much higher quality. We must then address the question, do people really prefer higher order pleasures to lower? Mill said it himself, as described earlier, the only possible proof that something is desirable is that it is desired. For both of these things to be true, it must be proven that people so clearly prefer higher pleasures that it erases any doubt that lower pleasures may have equal or more value. While most people, if you were to ask them whether they would rather be sad Socrates or a happy pig, would choose Socrates, we cannot depend only on their words but must inspect their actions as well. We are all familiar with the story of an avid reader and curious child in grade school who no longer reads and watches television instead. Mill is unbothered by our example of an inquisitive young mind turned couch potato. Rather, he explains that the person engaging in lower order pleasures serves to prove his point. These people who settle for the most easily achieved pleasure and may perceive this as a choice but are actually no longer capable of experiencing the “better” option by the time they resort to such cheap happiness. As he describes it, “Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise”(48). Mill does not place blame on the individuals, but rather the system which robs them of their higher functioning. It is not difficult to be convinced that the child who loved learning when he was young and grew to resent it after it was made mandatory has lost the ability to engage those parts of his mind anymore. Less convincing though is a claim that a rocket scientist, professor, or successful CEO cannot engage in lower pleasures when higher pleasures are available unless they have lost the ability to achieve the higher. Though, Mill would hold that they share the fate of the boy. This paints a vivid picture of how someone loses access to higher pleasures, though it is insufficient for proving that Mill’s defined higher pleasures are actually better. Mill relies on the assumption that people taking one path over another proves that the path is better, but only applies that logic to the people living the life he decided is superior. He determines that the people living opposing lives are simply lower to begin with and thus their opinions cannot be counted. In his words, people living the higher life are the “only competent judges.” The fool who prefers lower pleasures should not be listened to as they only know one side. They cannot see the full picture, and thus cannot possibly judge. The person able to experience higher goods knows both ends and will agree that the higher good is superior. At face value this appears as an ad hominem fallacy: Mill’s argument relies on the assertion that only the people who comply with his method qualify as trustworthy judges and all others are mistaken due to their condition. For this same reason, Mill’s reasoning comes dangerously close to being circular. His system can only be judged by those who qualify in that same system. Even if we were to accept Mill’s premise that fools cannot judge higher pleasures for lack of experience, he contradicts himself by saying higher functioning humans are familiar with lower pleasures. If they were familiar, would that not imply that they have had to experience it thoroughly enough to make a judgement? If this were the case, it would mean these people had chosen to engage with lower pleasures instead of high only to realize that higher was better. Informally so, it is not an outrageous claim to make that there are people who both engage in intellectual activities as well as pleasures of the flesh. We must, however, ignore that for the purpose of discussing Mill’s theory. Mill suggests that those living the life of higher pleasures have not succumb to the lower and thus cannot be so equally versed in the two lifestyles to be the unbiased judges he represents them as. He describes people who try to straddle the line between the types of pleasure as eventually being “broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both” (48) Thus, the people subscribing to a lifestyle of higher pleasures are not able to holistically view both lifestyles with an unbiased lens. Let us take for granted that a qualified judge would be familiar with both options. Mill leaves little room for the higher functioning people to ever have experienced the lower pleasures in the first place. If we were to use dual experience as the qualification, we must find another judge. Even if we granted that these higher functioning people have had experience with lower pleasures enough to feel familiar, and to determine they would not relinquish their intellect to be turned into a happy pig, they know not what it is like to be a wholly satisfied fool or pig. Thus, by Mill’s own qualification, they could not be proper judges. The only individual we have discussed who would qualify as a judge is the formerly inquisitive boy: He is the only one who has been fully immersed in each lifestyle without much overlap. Mill may be making errors in his assessment, but his theory can still stand. It is not unreasonable to suggest that people who have succumb to lives of lower pleasure can no longer choose to experience the higher. Some people stop reading and never start again, though they express longing for the times they read voraciously. However, the inability to choose the pleasures they engage in does not make them unaware of what higher pleasures used to feel like. The way that Mill can effectively prove that higher pleasures are better is not by disqualifying those living in the lower from voting, but, in fact by asking them if they would return back to the higher pleasures if they could. Would they exchange the ability to enjoy lower pleasures for being able to enjoy the higher pleasures of intellectual pursuits and imagination as they used to? It is not unreasonable to suggest that they would, in fact, restore their mental capacities. Mill’s conception of higher pleasures explains well why we would choose virtue over animalistic satisfaction in the case of the wrongfully convicted man, while still allowing the premise of utilitarianism to hold up. It seems as though Mill makes an error in considering who his opponents might be, and decides to take credibility away from intelligent people that have taken lower paths than they were originally capable of. Many of those people, in fact, would vote in his favor. Socrates, who has never been foolish is not qualified, by Mill’s own definition, to say that being Socrates is better. This does not mean, however, that utilitarianism is bound to defy justice and virtue: Mill’s distinction between higher and lower pleasures can still hold up despite the objections presented in this paper. https://zoeoverthinks.com/Is-Death-Bad-for-Those-Who-Have-Died Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:49:59 +0000 Zoe Overthinks https://zoeoverthinks.com/Is-Death-Bad-for-Those-Who-Have-Died <img width="1786" height="2519" width_o="1786" height_o="2519" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ba1b83cf22bc125655271b6d0d4fec6682541f6027d29a2be32991245faeb270/IMG_0185.GIF" data-mid="171953700" border="0" data-scale="27" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ba1b83cf22bc125655271b6d0d4fec6682541f6027d29a2be32991245faeb270/IMG_0185.GIF" /> Is Death Bad for Those Who Have Died?THIS PAPER ADDRESSED THOMAS NAGEL’S DEATH (1970). I OFFER MY OWN THEORY- THAT DEATH IS ONLY BAD FOR SOMEONE FOR AS LONG AS THEY COULD HAVE NATURALLY LIVED OTHERWISE. MARCH, 2017. The Statute of Limitations for the Deprivation Theory of Death Most people try to avoid death. They enjoy life, and want to know what will happen next. Many people live a hedonistic lifestyle: they make decisions and seek out experiences which they believe will maximize their pleasure in life, and avoid those that cause pain. Considering the desire to indulge in as many goods of life, people would want to live as long as possible, and dread the thought of a day in which they can no longer feel anything. It naturally follows that we consider death to be a bad thing because it is the ultimate and infinite end to indulgence. Thomas Nagel explains that living people who anticipate badness in death are making the error of trying to imagine how it will feel to be dead. Such thoughts are erroneous as one cannot imagine the absence of existence. Those guilty of doing so are left feeling unsettled as their lack of understanding makes death seem mysterious and scary. In Nagel’s account, the potential badness of death does not come from any positive, active characteristics of death but rather the negation of life which death implies the absence of. In other words, death deprives the dead from the all encompassing good that is life. For something to be bad for someone, the badness must occur to them at a particular time. Death cannot be bad for someone who is still alive, because death does not apply to them, categorically. Neither, one may suppose, can it be bad for someone who is dead because they no longer exist in the dimension of time or otherwise, and therefore the badness has no one to implicate itself on. This is the point Nagel tries to reconcile with, for he believes that death can still be bad for those that are dead, because they otherwise would be alive. There is value in Nagel’s point, however, he fails to put limitations on this badness, to be discussed later. A solution to this problem is to allow that death is bad for someone, but only so long as they realistically could have lived otherwise. Nagel’s account lacks sufficient description on what non-existence really is. His arguments rely on our inclination to see a dead person as vaguely existing. As discussed earlier, people cannot grasp nothingness, which makes contemplating death scary. Let’s imagine a particular child is born, matures into a man, lives a life, and eventually dies of old age. Now, on the other side, imagine an alternate storyline in which his parents never met, and therefore never created him. There is no man to experience badness or existence in the first place. Someone’s prenatal experience exists exactly as much as that of someone who has not been born yet and never will: that is, utterly non-existent. We do not feel bad for the hypothetical people that were never born. Thinking about them shows how difficult it is for our minds to grasp nothingness. If we don’t apply badness to the situation of the hypothetical man, we cannot rightfully do so for the person who not only has died, but has been dead long enough for there to to be no possibility of them still living a natural life in any universe. If we allow ourselves to think about a dead person as existing to the same exact extent that this non-person-and-never-will-be does, it is unconvincing that we may attribute being deprived of goods and the associated badness onto them. The word badness used here does not mean suffering or pain, as we assume for our purposes that someone who is dead has completely exited existence and thus cannot “feel” anything. We must allow for a situation in which someone can be in a bad state without knowing. According to Nagel, there is such a thing as an unexperienced bad. Take a scenario where a man whose loved ones and supposed friends are mean and hateful to him when he is not around. Though he may be oblivious and feels satisfied and loved in his relationships it is hard to argue that this situation is good for him. A more moving point is that of a once independent man who, due to some trauma, has undergone brain damage which has reverted his functioning and dependence on others to that of an infant. We do not feel bad for an actual infant in their state of limited capability, and furthermore, we did not ascribe badness to the same man when he was a proper infant himself. Even if the man feels no unpleasantness and is as unaware of his state and what he is missing out on, just as any other infant, it is still a bad condition. It is not the state of suffering that necessitate badness. Rather, it is the thoughts and experiences this man would have had, had this horrible accident not occurred. We would imagine that if the man was cognitively capable of assessing his condition, he would be devastated. This man could be considered dead in a way, though his body walks among the living, the person is gone. Considering this example, one can imagine how badness can occur to a person even if the person is not there. One flaw in using this scenario to justify death as bad is that much of the devastating nature of the story comes from the fact that the man is still on earth, and does exist at least an iota more than someone who is completely dead. This man cannot be our basis for what we consider non existence to be. There are further issues involved with Nagel’s comparison of death to the brain damaged man. The alternate universe in which he gets to experience the goods of life is not such a stretch from reality. The accident causing his injury actively made things bad for the man where otherwise he presumably would have continued to live a prosperous and enriching life. The man sits in front of us and we can pity him and imagine what would have happened had he not gotten into his car that day, or something along those lines. As for the person who is dead and gone, there is only so much slack we can allow for other possible worlds in which the person continues to experience the goods of life. Nagel’s deprivation account of death applies nicely to someone who died young due to accident or disease. One can imagine the family members of those who died young lamenting about how their loved one could have had a normal life if only they had caught the cancer earlier or had not tried to drive in a snow storm. It is easy to grant that such a person was robbed of the goods of life. On the other hand, in the case of someone who lived a long and fruitful life and died at the age of 95 having experienced love, art, and all other goods that life involves one cannot as straightforwardly justify why death continues to be bad for him for the centuries that will elapse after his natural death. There is no alternate realm of possibility where that man continues to walk the earth. No storyline can deviate much from this one where he dies that allows the man to enjoy much more life. As I imagine Nagel would agree, life is a good in which Paul McCartney has enjoyed more of than John Lennon, for example. Based on this, his justification of good exists on the axis of time. Paul McCartney has been afforded much more time to experience the goods of life such as reunion tours and cameos on television shows than the late John Lennon. But Nagel also implies that death is unaffected by time as he would agree that death has not been worse for Abraham Lincoln than it has been for Ronald Reagan say, because the former has been dead for more time. Ronald Reagan died from Alzheimer's at 93 while Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at the age of 56. Contrary to what Nagel says, death seems like a worse condition for Lincoln. We are left to imagine how many years of policy making and poetry reading Lincoln would have been afforded had he not died so young, but there is not much to imagine for Reagan. Granting this, there must be a statute of limitations on how long death is bad. It would be a shame if we were to exist for 90 years if lucky, and then spend millennia to come disadvantaged by the badness of death. One may allow that death is bad, but only for as long as someone would have lived had they not died when they did. It is difficult to view death as bad for Lincoln 152 years after his untimely death, though for the the 40 years after his death, his misfortune is distinct. As with the case of the brain damaged man, the badness of his condition relies on the fact that he could plausibly be better for more time.&nbsp; In the cases of the brain damaged man and John Lennon, both people could otherwise be enjoying the goods of life. One could grant that though they do not experience the badness, they are nonetheless in a bad situation. They undergo this unexperienced bad that Nagel describes, but there is also the component that there is another universe where it is possible that they are still alive and enjoying the pleasures associated. In the cases of Reagan and Lincoln, Nagel’s theory falls short. Nagel says that death is just as bad for all those who are dead, regardless of how long they have been afflicted with the condition. But this theory is insufficient. The badness of death is much more smoothly applied to someone who could have plausibly enjoyed more of it, had their life taken a different path. We are not debating here whether immortality is good, but whether death is bad. To call all death bad seems more like greediness.&nbsp; We can apply badness to death, only to someone who did not get their fair amount. Death is bad, but only to the point in which life would no longer be possible. "President's Remarks on the Passing of President Ronald Reagan". The White House. June 6, 2004. Retrieved 2017-02-23. Richard A. R. Fraser, MD (February–March 1995). "How Did Lincoln Die?". American Heritage. 46 (1). Retrieved 2017-02-23. https://zoeoverthinks.com/Intuition-in-Meaning-Philosophy-of-Language Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:49:59 +0000 Zoe Overthinks https://zoeoverthinks.com/Intuition-in-Meaning-Philosophy-of-Language <img width="1620" height="850" width_o="1620" height_o="850" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/acf9b3b0bd6f3ba4a97f533c84a40cc8685f54844d13256d44ddab8de447af09/brain1.gif" data-mid="171859217" border="0" data-scale="40" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/acf9b3b0bd6f3ba4a97f533c84a40cc8685f54844d13256d44ddab8de447af09/brain1.gif" /> Intuition in MeaningA PAPER ON AJ AYER’S VERIFICATIONISM&nbsp; JANUARY 2016 By Zoe Cohen A.J Ayer was concerned with proving that there was little meaning and purpose in metaphysics, and that any discussion of things which transcend sensory experiences is an exercise in futility. He was a supporter of logical positivism and verificationism, which sought to give philosophy and empirical sciences a closer relationship. He boldly states, as verificationists do, that a statement regarding things in the metaphysical realm cannot be described as either true or false because they are simply senseless and philosophers who have spent their time describing such matters have been dedicated to creating nonsense. Ayer’s goal is to pin down a set of values which qualify a statement as being meaningful. Though he comes from a place of questioning the legitimacy of human understanding, it seems as though human intuition is more reliable than a finite set of rules in determining meaning. Ayer references Immanuel Kant who takes a stance against transcendent metaphysics as well, but his reasoning differs. Kant’s view is that the human mind is not equipped to grasp concepts that are beyond the physical realm: it just is not programmed in our software. This begs the question, if a human mind is incapable of grasping such concepts, from which naturally follows that they are devoid of thoughts of that realm, how could we know that we do not know such things? This question would never bother us in the first place if it were inconceivable to us. Upon consideration of this flaw, Ayer presents an alternative: that this is not a psychological issue. The answer cannot be found based on what a human brain can apprehend, but rather what makes a statement meaningful in the first place. He thinks that statements made about the metaphysical are not worth saying because they do not comply to the rules that give a sentence value, though he has no basis for saying this as of yet because no comprehensive guide of these rules has been formed. He attempts to retroactively pull it together. Ayer’s goal in his paper is to identify the characteristics of expressing a matter of fact, which he refers to as “the criterion of verifiability.” In proving a verificationist theory, one may indulge themself by forgoing the process of undermining specific arguments against it, instead sabotaging the entire genre of thinking that could go against it in one fell swoop. A verificationist could easily brush off any arguments made against their beliefs by claiming the statement is nonsense. It is important to take into account that the verification theory itself is not observable, a paradox which renders its own existence erroneous. Ayer proceeds to vaguely and loosely hash out the criteria of a meaningful sentence. For many statements we assume that they would be verified if we went through the trouble of doing so, but we believe them without going through the process. There are also statements for which a proper experiment could not be conducted because we do not have the means, but verification is conceivable. Ayer refers to this as verifiable in principle. Ayer is not saying that anything that cannot be verified is fallacious, he is saying that at the very least a proposition must have some method with which it could be verified with, even if it is not an accessible method, though this would make it weakly verifiable. Take the theory of gravity for example: The theory is that mass is attracted to other mass by way of a specific formula. You can conduct many experiments by dropping objects of various densities and weight, and they may all fall to the ground with their acceleration matching what the equation said it would. But the theory of gravity is still a theory because to prove beyond all doubt that mass is attracted to mass you would have to drop every type of item with different characteristics against each other. Though that is not an experiment that can feasibly be accomplished, If Ayer so boldly wants to claim that statements that cannot be verified have no sense and are pointless to utter, statements that fall under the “weakly verifiable” should be as good as not verifiable at all. Theories such as the aforementioned gravity, or Ayer’s example that arsenic is poison or that all men are mortal, are laws that address an infinite number of material or events are no more than weakly verifiable. These statements address an infinite description of the events, objects, and phenomena, so a finite observation of them is not sufficient to verify conclusively. This means these statements cannot be proven, only disproven. Though it is of note that the example “arsenic is poisonous” does not fit in among the rest. For if one person ingested what is considered a lethal dose of arsenic and survived, it does not negate the many people before him who died from arsenic poisoning. To Ayer, verifiability is not a binary. There is a range. Something is strongly verifiable if its trueness can be experienced first hand through the senses. An argument saying that the senses may not be as reliable of a source because they rely on the interpretation of something as fallible as a consciousness, is of no use for us here because it is of the metaphysical realm. A weakly verifiable statement is one which is potentially possible and certain observations increase the probability of its relevance. His use of the word probability jumps out here. Probability is generally used in the context of true or false, yes or no. The situation Ayer has created is more like “relevant or nonsense”, or perhaps “true or nonsense.” The goal is not to prove that all of these metaphysical concepts are inaccurate and not even to say that there’s no possible way there is some universal, abstract possibility of the ideas. In trying to prove a metaphysical statement wrong, you are affirming that you know enough about this to talk about it and that it is worth talking about. The point of verificationism is that there’s just no point in talking about it because we cannot arrive at a conclusive answer. They don’t take a stance against a particular concept, they just see it as a waste of time. The opposite of truth is not nonsense, but this theorem operates as such. It seems as though the theorem misses the point entirely, and Ayer has set out to prove something different than what he claims. His entire theory of meaning is based on verifiability, yet he undermines the very meaning of the word. He chose a specific characteristic, saying that the absence or presence of it is the determining factor in whether every single statement has meaning, that word should not be immediately muddled and warped. As he says about language, we do not need to babble nonsense to pin down exactly what makes a statement devoid of sense. We know nonsense when we hear it. There is intuitive knowledge of sense in language. If, as he claims, we have an intuitive radar for nonsense, mustn’t we have an intuitive understanding of sense? How can we know the absence of something without knowing the presence of it? If we were inclined to use conclusive verifiability as what qualifies a statement as meaningful, then any general statements like those above go the same way as the metaphysical statements. Some positivists go so far as to say that these statements must be nonsense considering they do not pass the test, but they are still “important nonsense.” Such a statement is oxymoronic. A statement that fails the test that is designed to tell whether or not it is an important statement worth saying, it cannot still be described as important. The test itself becomes nonsense. Something is either verifiable or it is not. Either his concept of what qualifies a statement as verifiable is too narrow and strict, or verifiability is not the ultimate determining factor in meaning. This world of chaos where nothing can be known for certain and we only wait for the day when an event proves that the things we believe and the laws that we abide by were nonsense all along is not our world. Under these conditions, we should not put faith in gravity because one day someone might drop something that does not fall. Though as stated before, for us to have an intuitive grasp of nonsense, we must be intuitively acquainted with sense. Perhaps it does go back to Kant with his ideas of psychology. If we can detect an error in the phrase “the ray of light is heavy” then what makes it impossible that we may be able to detect the presence of sense? Ayer brings up the fact that for many statements we assume it would be verified if we bothered to do so. That’s because our brains are attuned to picking out nonsense in statements in their construction and their language. We should not forgo human understanding and intuition in favor of a loosely defined and incomplete set of rules. If we would not accept a finite conclusion about something infinite like gravity, why should we accept a finite list of rules to catalogue something as infinite as meaning? A world in which no one discusses or muses over anything but the explicitly verifiable is a world where no advancements are made: a world devoid of curiosity. Long before verifying a concept becomes a concern, someone comes up with an idea. It takes much development and discussion to test out an idea and perhaps decades may pass before someone comes up with a method for testing it. Perhaps Ayer’s verification criteria serves to identify only the easiest, most straightforward and banal ideas. But just as we cannot be utterly doubtless about the infinite nature of gravity, we cannot be sure that any metaphysical thought will never mature into something beyond nonsense. You cannot conclusively say that there is no purpose to considering an idea.