Good news!
The Second Draft has been finished,
but not yet posted.
The material is now in a more fluid
order, is less bumpy in phrasing, and
has new chapters.
It prints out at 144 pages!
Now, yes, now, I have a real, live
person, who is very talented, editing.
Third draft should be ready soon!
Then, check back for an important
announcement.
In the meantime, keep on thinking!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Philosophy for the Hasty Reader
This site is Under Construction (as is all of life).
Here is intended a Summary of Philosophy,
in quick pamphlet form. One goal
is to reveal the most in the least
space.
The most important goal is to
share the joy of thinking, the
delight of reasoning, and the
highest and greatest pleasure
of all times and places,
Philosophy.
How to Begin
Mechanics of the site:
Notice the Pages marked with "links" on the top right edge
of this screen. They each give more information.
The link titled, "About Us," leads us to a page that tells simply why we are writing. It is the Foreword.
The link marked "Contents Page" takes us to the chapter listings, just like the Contents Page of any book.
The list of links beneath "Blog Archive" take us to each chapter, by number. Each Chapter Number is a link to that particular chapter.
At the end of each screen, at the bottom right, is a link marked "Older Posts." Click here to reach the next screen. The chapters take up several screens. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of each one in order to continue reading.
Note:
At this point, all we see are the introductory
remarks within each chapter. The text will be
filled in through time and effort.
As the Chapters are filled in, you will
notice on the "Archives" list to the right
that a title has been added next to the
number of that Chapter.
Return, please, to see how pamphlet
develops.
Thank you for your attention.
---Response from some readers is that
beginning at the end, "The Function of
Philosophy," is actually a good place to
begin. It shows how Philosophy
is useful, important, and inspiring.
---Some readers find the first Chapter,
"Proofs of God," one of the more
difficult and recommend returning
to it after reading a few others first.
---Now, I think it all makes perfect
sense in the order in which it is
presented. You decide.
Enjoy.
Here is intended a Summary of Philosophy,
in quick pamphlet form. One goal
is to reveal the most in the least
space.
The most important goal is to
share the joy of thinking, the
delight of reasoning, and the
highest and greatest pleasure
of all times and places,
Philosophy.
How to Begin
Mechanics of the site:
Notice the Pages marked with "links" on the top right edge
of this screen. They each give more information.
The link titled, "About Us," leads us to a page that tells simply why we are writing. It is the Foreword.
The link marked "Contents Page" takes us to the chapter listings, just like the Contents Page of any book.
The list of links beneath "Blog Archive" take us to each chapter, by number. Each Chapter Number is a link to that particular chapter.
At the end of each screen, at the bottom right, is a link marked "Older Posts." Click here to reach the next screen. The chapters take up several screens. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of each one in order to continue reading.
Note:
At this point, all we see are the introductory
remarks within each chapter. The text will be
filled in through time and effort.
As the Chapters are filled in, you will
notice on the "Archives" list to the right
that a title has been added next to the
number of that Chapter.
Return, please, to see how pamphlet
develops.
Thank you for your attention.
---Response from some readers is that
beginning at the end, "The Function of
Philosophy," is actually a good place to
begin. It shows how Philosophy
is useful, important, and inspiring.
---Some readers find the first Chapter,
"Proofs of God," one of the more
difficult and recommend returning
to it after reading a few others first.
---Now, I think it all makes perfect
sense in the order in which it is
presented. You decide.
Enjoy.
1 - Proofs of God
God: The Beginning of Abstract Reasoning.
Here we discuss roughly a dozen different "proofs of God" that have persisted through the centuries, along with their "counter-proofs."
There is no intent to convert or to change our beliefs. The sole concern is to develop our thinking. Reason is the domain of Philosophy, and beliefs are the domain of Theology.
Proofs of God
I assure you that you will never see a list of this many proofs of God in any one place. I have been collecting them for years. Most people content themselves with one or two. I have 16.
Format: The name of the philosopher is given first. Each proof is stated in its briefest form. An explanation follows. Each proof is refuted by a counter-argument. Enjoy. Expand your thinking.
Note: Most people find proof number 2, a thousand years old, to be the most difficult to follow. It is based solely on reason. We live in a time when often unquestioned faith is valued over thinking. You might return to St. Anselm after the others.
1 -Socrates - Conscience. Everyone has this inner voice.
Explanation - As he entered the court building, Socrates said his inner voice did not tell him to turn back. Throughout his life, Socrates always listened to his inner voice.
Counter-argument - Does everyone have a conscience? There are some people who seem to have none at all. Therefore, God does not necessarily exist.
2 - St. Anselm - Ontological Argument (meaning, based on Being, or Existence)
He wrote over a thousand years ago in Latin shortly after William the Conqueror took over England, long before the evolution of the English language. Surely, we can easily understand his reasoning today.
a - Definition: God is the Greatest Good (taken from Plato).
St. Anselm explains this is the same as saying :
God is "That than which nothing greater can be conceived"
b - It is better to exist than not to exist.
c - Therefore, God must exist.
Explanation - (a) He wrote over a thousand years ago in Latin, shortly after William the Conqueror took over England, long before the evolution of the English language. Surely, we can easily understand his reasoning today.
(b) Plato's definition is actually that God can be found through ultimate Beauty, which the greatest good. This notion of finding God through Beauty re-emerged during the Renaissance. (For more discussion, see PhilosophyFAQs.blogspot.com) At any rate, St. Anselm stole the definition of God as the Greatest Good from the ancient Greek pagan, Plato.
(c) "That than which nothing greater can be conceived." ("TTWNGCBC") (Easy, right? We can't even think of (conceive of) something greater than God. It's part of how we define God. Once you accept this definition, the next steps fall into line.) After all, what could possibly be greater than God?
(d) For some reason, many contemporary people find this the hardest accept. It is based on Deductive reasoning. This what we use in Mathematics. For example, in Geometry, we claim a triangle has 3 sides. If we find something with 3 sides, it must be a triangle. We are applying a definition. In the same way, St. Anselm is just applying a definition. It's like using a dictionary.
(e) It is better to exist than not to exist.
For example, each of us prefers personally existing to not existing; we think it is better for us to exist than not to exist. In the same way, we would think a Paradise Island would be better if it existed than if it did not. However, a Paradise Island is just an idea, not a definition, and does not have to exist.
God is defined as the Greatest Good.
If we find something that fits this definition, similar to finding a 3 sided thing, then that item fits the definition and is in fact and in reality the term that is defined, be it "triangle," or "God." This is what is meant be the word "definition." A=b+c; B=b+c; therefore, A=B.
(f) It is "more good," better, to exist than not to. Therefore, for God to be truly the ultimate good, God must exist. Without existence, God would be less than any ultimate good that we can even think of, "that than which nothing greater can be conceived."
(g) God = (is defined as) TTWNGCBC, the Greatest Good; existing is better than not existing; therefore, God must exist.
(h) This is a Valid Syllogism. Deductive reasoning uses syllogisms.
The terms and the order in which they are presented are logically "valid." Whether or not they are in fact "true," is outside the consideration of Deductive reasoning. (See also, detailed explanation in PhilosophyFAQs.)
Counter-argument - The syllogism can be valid without being true. It all depends on the factual truth of the definition. God might be less than the greatest good? God might be less than all-powerful. God might be less than all good.
Three-sided things are triangles, but no perfectly drawn 3 sided thing exists. The "real" drawings are always just a little off, less than perfection.
2 - 6 - St. Thomas Aquinas - Cosmological (based on existence of the cosmos, meaning Creation.)
2 - Change - Unmoved Mover
3 - Causation - First Cause
4 - Contingency (Possibility) - Necessary Being
5 - Degrees of Excellence - Perfect Being
6 - Harmony - Intelligent Designer
Explanation: From the existence of the item on the left, we can infer the existence of the item on the right. Because there is change, there must have been a beginning that did not change, but from which all the resulting change rolled like dominos: the Prime Mover. Each of the names on the right are from Aristotle. Each of these proofs are based on the existence of the Creation proving the existence of a Creator.
Counter-argument: What if there was no creation event? Then all of these five proofs would fail, because there would be no beginning in time. Two-thirds of the world believe in religions that do not posit a creation event: life is a cycle of being; reincarnation. It is possible the cosmos goes in and out of being over all time, like passing through a Black Hole and coming out into another universe on the other side.
7 - Paley - Teleological Argument (everything has a purpose.)
Humans create things with a purpose; therefore, God must, also.
Explanation: Each thing and each person must have been created by a Creator with a purpose because humans create with purpose.
Counter-argument: (a) What is the purpose of the mosquito? What function does the armadillo perform? What if there were just a few things that don't have a purpose?
(b) Humans make many useless things: they call them art; others they call toys. What if God is making toys? What if the universe is the science experiment of a superluminal robot?
(c) Humans make things that they later forget about. What if God forgot that he made a universe?
8 - Pascal - The Wager
Infinite gain results from of finite effort.
Explanation: Making a finite effort at religious actions during a finite lifetime leads to an infinite reward of eternal life. If we do not make this limited, finite effort, we risk losing an infinite reward. The risk is less, the gamble is better, to make the choice of religious actions during our lifetimes. (Pascal invited the theory of probability.)
Counter-argument: (a) One should believe in God only because of an award? What about "virtue as its own reward?" We should believe only because of what we can get out of it?
(b) This is the best argument ever for the death-bed conversion: the least possible effort; the greatest gain.
9 - James - (a) - Life is better with belief in ultimate Being and ultimate Justice. The "Will to Believe" leads to a more trusting, happier life.
(b) - Mystics (those who believe "All is One,") of all religions report similar experiences.
Counter-argument: (a) Many atheists report happy lives. Is ultimate revenge a moral reason to believe in God? Does belief in the destruction of enemies make us loving people?
(b) People who believe in UFOs and vampires report similar experiences.
10 - Leibnitz - God is the greatest good.
Therefore, He created the greatest possible universe.
This is "the best of all possible worlds."
Therefore, evil and suffering are necessary.
Counter-argument: (a) We don't have any other universes before us to compare with this one. Maybe there is one with less evil and suffering. Maybe God was an inadequate Craftsman who made a mistake.
(b) From David Hume - A good God would exclude evil and suffering in both the natural world and among humans. A God who allows evil and suffering is not a good God.
11 - John Hick - Pain and suffering are character building.
Explanation: Suffering is a mystery. To accept it as a part of God's plan is the most soothing explanation. To ask: "What is the lesson we can learn from this?" leads us to an acceptance of suffering. Accepting suffering builds character. Those who have not suffered remain shallow.
Counter-argument: (a) What kind of a God is this? He harms those he loves? Isn't that sadistic?
(b) What about just a little less pain? What about just a little less "character?"
12 - Malcolm - Contemporary Deductive Argument (also attributed to Plantinga)
a - God must be either "necessary" or "impossible."
b - God is not "impossible."
c - Therefore, God is necessary.
Explanation: Believers claim God must exist. Non-believers claim God is impossible. (For example: The laws of science are sufficient. Divine Intervention interferes with the very laws God is claimed to have set into motion.) God must be one or the other. However, we can imagine God, and positing His existence does not interfere with the smooth running of the universe. Therefore, God must exist.
Counter-argument: The opposite is also true. Some people can easily imagine living in a world without God. A universe without God does not fall apart. As stated above, Divine Intervention contradicts the very laws of the universe the Creator is claimed to have established. God is impossible because His interference would discredit the value of the system of science. Therefore, God is not only not necessary, but also impossible.
13 - Precusers to Existentialism:
(i) - Kierkegaard - "Leap of Faith"
Faith alone is sufficient.
The great Unknown must be God.
Explanation: All the rational arguments fall aside in the light of reason. Therefore, "the leap of faith in the arms of the loving God," is the only answer. Reason is futile. Faith alone can guide.
Counter-argument: (a) Which faith? Can we be sure God will be there to catch us? Even the most religious go through periods of doubt or of a sense of distance from God.
(b) Doesn't this give up on "the greatest gift God gave us," reason. It separates us, we think, from the animals. We would not willingly give up an arm, a "gift from our Creator?" Why then should we give up reason?
(c) Laziness of thought is not a basis for belief in the existence of God.
(ii) - Nietzsche - Christianity is a "slave morality."
The "Will to Power" is greater than the "Will to Believe."
Explanation: Belief in Christian values of self-sacrifice are soothing to oppressed masses unwilling to wake up to their condition. An amoral superman is needed to transcend the limitations of Christian morality in order to evolve to the next and higher step of human development. Christianity hold us back from true strength. Only a superman can lead us there. The superman must survive and conquer at all costs. He must be selfish to win. Greed is good. The superman is deserving of all the rewards of his selfish actions. (Basis of the novels of Ayn Rand.) (See also, the Chapter on "Egoism.")
14 - Descartes - Trademark of the Creator
Explanation: Each of us asks the question of whether God exists. This is the "trademark" of the Creator, like the mark of the potter on His creation. Since each of us seeks the answer, then that question must have been engraved on our souls from birth.
Counter-argument: What about people who never ask? What about people who don't have the mental capacity to ask? What kind of answer is sufficient?
15 - Common Belief - Most people believe in God, therefore, God must exist.
Explanation: Most people believe, therefore, most people are right.
Counter-argument: Popularity does not make a claim correct. The majority can be wrong anytime. That is why we have a Bill of Rights: to protect the minority or one individual from the vengeance of a mob of the majority.
16 - Common Sense - Humans throughout time and place, in all cultures have had a belief in the spiritual world. Therefore, God must exist. (This was true until Modern Western Philosophy, roughly the past 200 years in Europe and North America, a drop in the ocean of time of humans on planet Earth, but a time of the greatest ratio of literacy ever.)
Counter-argument: Humans in almost every time and culture have had slavery, war, and oppression of women. Not everything human cultures do is good.
17 - The Bible says so.
Explanation: God exists because the Bible says so. The Bible is true because God wrote it.
Counter-argument: Circular reasoning. Example: X is true because Y says so; Y is true because X says so. No proof for the validity of either X or Y is offered. They simply re-enforce empty claims.
Yes, there are some "counter-counter-arguments" to some of these proofs, meaning arguments that the affirmative is true.
I'll let you figure those out for now.
Here we discuss roughly a dozen different "proofs of God" that have persisted through the centuries, along with their "counter-proofs."
There is no intent to convert or to change our beliefs. The sole concern is to develop our thinking. Reason is the domain of Philosophy, and beliefs are the domain of Theology.
Proofs of God
I assure you that you will never see a list of this many proofs of God in any one place. I have been collecting them for years. Most people content themselves with one or two. I have 16.
Format: The name of the philosopher is given first. Each proof is stated in its briefest form. An explanation follows. Each proof is refuted by a counter-argument. Enjoy. Expand your thinking.
Note: Most people find proof number 2, a thousand years old, to be the most difficult to follow. It is based solely on reason. We live in a time when often unquestioned faith is valued over thinking. You might return to St. Anselm after the others.
1 -Socrates - Conscience. Everyone has this inner voice.
Explanation - As he entered the court building, Socrates said his inner voice did not tell him to turn back. Throughout his life, Socrates always listened to his inner voice.
Counter-argument - Does everyone have a conscience? There are some people who seem to have none at all. Therefore, God does not necessarily exist.
2 - St. Anselm - Ontological Argument (meaning, based on Being, or Existence)
He wrote over a thousand years ago in Latin shortly after William the Conqueror took over England, long before the evolution of the English language. Surely, we can easily understand his reasoning today.
a - Definition: God is the Greatest Good (taken from Plato).
St. Anselm explains this is the same as saying :
God is "That than which nothing greater can be conceived"
b - It is better to exist than not to exist.
c - Therefore, God must exist.
Explanation - (a) He wrote over a thousand years ago in Latin, shortly after William the Conqueror took over England, long before the evolution of the English language. Surely, we can easily understand his reasoning today.
(b) Plato's definition is actually that God can be found through ultimate Beauty, which the greatest good. This notion of finding God through Beauty re-emerged during the Renaissance. (For more discussion, see PhilosophyFAQs.blogspot.com) At any rate, St. Anselm stole the definition of God as the Greatest Good from the ancient Greek pagan, Plato.
(c) "That than which nothing greater can be conceived." ("TTWNGCBC") (Easy, right? We can't even think of (conceive of) something greater than God. It's part of how we define God. Once you accept this definition, the next steps fall into line.) After all, what could possibly be greater than God?
(d) For some reason, many contemporary people find this the hardest accept. It is based on Deductive reasoning. This what we use in Mathematics. For example, in Geometry, we claim a triangle has 3 sides. If we find something with 3 sides, it must be a triangle. We are applying a definition. In the same way, St. Anselm is just applying a definition. It's like using a dictionary.
(e) It is better to exist than not to exist.
For example, each of us prefers personally existing to not existing; we think it is better for us to exist than not to exist. In the same way, we would think a Paradise Island would be better if it existed than if it did not. However, a Paradise Island is just an idea, not a definition, and does not have to exist.
God is defined as the Greatest Good.
If we find something that fits this definition, similar to finding a 3 sided thing, then that item fits the definition and is in fact and in reality the term that is defined, be it "triangle," or "God." This is what is meant be the word "definition." A=b+c; B=b+c; therefore, A=B.
(f) It is "more good," better, to exist than not to. Therefore, for God to be truly the ultimate good, God must exist. Without existence, God would be less than any ultimate good that we can even think of, "that than which nothing greater can be conceived."
(g) God = (is defined as) TTWNGCBC, the Greatest Good; existing is better than not existing; therefore, God must exist.
(h) This is a Valid Syllogism. Deductive reasoning uses syllogisms.
The terms and the order in which they are presented are logically "valid." Whether or not they are in fact "true," is outside the consideration of Deductive reasoning. (See also, detailed explanation in PhilosophyFAQs.)
Counter-argument - The syllogism can be valid without being true. It all depends on the factual truth of the definition. God might be less than the greatest good? God might be less than all-powerful. God might be less than all good.
Three-sided things are triangles, but no perfectly drawn 3 sided thing exists. The "real" drawings are always just a little off, less than perfection.
2 - 6 - St. Thomas Aquinas - Cosmological (based on existence of the cosmos, meaning Creation.)
2 - Change - Unmoved Mover
3 - Causation - First Cause
4 - Contingency (Possibility) - Necessary Being
5 - Degrees of Excellence - Perfect Being
6 - Harmony - Intelligent Designer
Explanation: From the existence of the item on the left, we can infer the existence of the item on the right. Because there is change, there must have been a beginning that did not change, but from which all the resulting change rolled like dominos: the Prime Mover. Each of the names on the right are from Aristotle. Each of these proofs are based on the existence of the Creation proving the existence of a Creator.
Counter-argument: What if there was no creation event? Then all of these five proofs would fail, because there would be no beginning in time. Two-thirds of the world believe in religions that do not posit a creation event: life is a cycle of being; reincarnation. It is possible the cosmos goes in and out of being over all time, like passing through a Black Hole and coming out into another universe on the other side.
7 - Paley - Teleological Argument (everything has a purpose.)
Humans create things with a purpose; therefore, God must, also.
Explanation: Each thing and each person must have been created by a Creator with a purpose because humans create with purpose.
Counter-argument: (a) What is the purpose of the mosquito? What function does the armadillo perform? What if there were just a few things that don't have a purpose?
(b) Humans make many useless things: they call them art; others they call toys. What if God is making toys? What if the universe is the science experiment of a superluminal robot?
(c) Humans make things that they later forget about. What if God forgot that he made a universe?
8 - Pascal - The Wager
Infinite gain results from of finite effort.
Explanation: Making a finite effort at religious actions during a finite lifetime leads to an infinite reward of eternal life. If we do not make this limited, finite effort, we risk losing an infinite reward. The risk is less, the gamble is better, to make the choice of religious actions during our lifetimes. (Pascal invited the theory of probability.)
Counter-argument: (a) One should believe in God only because of an award? What about "virtue as its own reward?" We should believe only because of what we can get out of it?
(b) This is the best argument ever for the death-bed conversion: the least possible effort; the greatest gain.
9 - James - (a) - Life is better with belief in ultimate Being and ultimate Justice. The "Will to Believe" leads to a more trusting, happier life.
(b) - Mystics (those who believe "All is One,") of all religions report similar experiences.
Counter-argument: (a) Many atheists report happy lives. Is ultimate revenge a moral reason to believe in God? Does belief in the destruction of enemies make us loving people?
(b) People who believe in UFOs and vampires report similar experiences.
10 - Leibnitz - God is the greatest good.
Therefore, He created the greatest possible universe.
This is "the best of all possible worlds."
Therefore, evil and suffering are necessary.
Counter-argument: (a) We don't have any other universes before us to compare with this one. Maybe there is one with less evil and suffering. Maybe God was an inadequate Craftsman who made a mistake.
(b) From David Hume - A good God would exclude evil and suffering in both the natural world and among humans. A God who allows evil and suffering is not a good God.
11 - John Hick - Pain and suffering are character building.
Explanation: Suffering is a mystery. To accept it as a part of God's plan is the most soothing explanation. To ask: "What is the lesson we can learn from this?" leads us to an acceptance of suffering. Accepting suffering builds character. Those who have not suffered remain shallow.
Counter-argument: (a) What kind of a God is this? He harms those he loves? Isn't that sadistic?
(b) What about just a little less pain? What about just a little less "character?"
12 - Malcolm - Contemporary Deductive Argument (also attributed to Plantinga)
a - God must be either "necessary" or "impossible."
b - God is not "impossible."
c - Therefore, God is necessary.
Explanation: Believers claim God must exist. Non-believers claim God is impossible. (For example: The laws of science are sufficient. Divine Intervention interferes with the very laws God is claimed to have set into motion.) God must be one or the other. However, we can imagine God, and positing His existence does not interfere with the smooth running of the universe. Therefore, God must exist.
Counter-argument: The opposite is also true. Some people can easily imagine living in a world without God. A universe without God does not fall apart. As stated above, Divine Intervention contradicts the very laws of the universe the Creator is claimed to have established. God is impossible because His interference would discredit the value of the system of science. Therefore, God is not only not necessary, but also impossible.
13 - Precusers to Existentialism:
(i) - Kierkegaard - "Leap of Faith"
Faith alone is sufficient.
The great Unknown must be God.
Explanation: All the rational arguments fall aside in the light of reason. Therefore, "the leap of faith in the arms of the loving God," is the only answer. Reason is futile. Faith alone can guide.
Counter-argument: (a) Which faith? Can we be sure God will be there to catch us? Even the most religious go through periods of doubt or of a sense of distance from God.
(b) Doesn't this give up on "the greatest gift God gave us," reason. It separates us, we think, from the animals. We would not willingly give up an arm, a "gift from our Creator?" Why then should we give up reason?
(c) Laziness of thought is not a basis for belief in the existence of God.
(ii) - Nietzsche - Christianity is a "slave morality."
The "Will to Power" is greater than the "Will to Believe."
Explanation: Belief in Christian values of self-sacrifice are soothing to oppressed masses unwilling to wake up to their condition. An amoral superman is needed to transcend the limitations of Christian morality in order to evolve to the next and higher step of human development. Christianity hold us back from true strength. Only a superman can lead us there. The superman must survive and conquer at all costs. He must be selfish to win. Greed is good. The superman is deserving of all the rewards of his selfish actions. (Basis of the novels of Ayn Rand.) (See also, the Chapter on "Egoism.")
14 - Descartes - Trademark of the Creator
Explanation: Each of us asks the question of whether God exists. This is the "trademark" of the Creator, like the mark of the potter on His creation. Since each of us seeks the answer, then that question must have been engraved on our souls from birth.
Counter-argument: What about people who never ask? What about people who don't have the mental capacity to ask? What kind of answer is sufficient?
15 - Common Belief - Most people believe in God, therefore, God must exist.
Explanation: Most people believe, therefore, most people are right.
Counter-argument: Popularity does not make a claim correct. The majority can be wrong anytime. That is why we have a Bill of Rights: to protect the minority or one individual from the vengeance of a mob of the majority.
16 - Common Sense - Humans throughout time and place, in all cultures have had a belief in the spiritual world. Therefore, God must exist. (This was true until Modern Western Philosophy, roughly the past 200 years in Europe and North America, a drop in the ocean of time of humans on planet Earth, but a time of the greatest ratio of literacy ever.)
Counter-argument: Humans in almost every time and culture have had slavery, war, and oppression of women. Not everything human cultures do is good.
17 - The Bible says so.
Explanation: God exists because the Bible says so. The Bible is true because God wrote it.
Counter-argument: Circular reasoning. Example: X is true because Y says so; Y is true because X says so. No proof for the validity of either X or Y is offered. They simply re-enforce empty claims.
Yes, there are some "counter-counter-arguments" to some of these proofs, meaning arguments that the affirmative is true.
I'll let you figure those out for now.
2 - What Should We Do?
Ethics: What Should We Do, and Why?
There are so many ways to describe what is right or wrong. We look at some of the most popular and discuss the best points of each, as well as their limitations.
I. Why Do We Not Create Moral Theories from Scratch?
We use the terms, definitions, and descriptions from major philosophers. These have been refined over time by the discussions of reflective, rational thinkers. These give us a common framework for communicating our ideas.
II. What Are the Most Used Ethical Theories?
Ethical theories most used within the study of Applied Ethics are
(1) Utilitarianism, looking to consequences of actions to determine the maximum pleasure for the maximum number of people;
(2) Duty Ethics, looking to the intentions before the actions;
(3) Virtue Ethics, looking at the habits of character and moderation to determine excellence and morality;
(4) Natural Law or Legal Rights, looking to rights from legal or political statements or from rational examination and understanding of what those rights are, whether God-given or not, which flow to all humans by reason of being born human; and
(5) Caring Ethics, judging action by the level of caring for the web of relationships, nurturing human flourishing within a personal, social context, or the empathetic involvement in the lives of others that envisions the best possible future.
III. What is Utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism is empirical; it looks to measurable experience in the material world.
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, from the 19th Century in England, sought an ethical standard that would recognize human pleasure as the good, making its measurement and expansion paramount. Although pleasure might seem to be a subjective standard, Utilitarians judge consequences solely by objective, reasonable standards. Utilitarians do not consider the opinions of those who like pain, for example, to be rational.
In seeking to liberate the wishes of society as a whole from subjugation to the will of the ruling elite, Utilitarian philosophers defined the good as that which creates the maximum pleasure, that is, the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. Thus, the pleasure of the wealthy few does not defeat the wants of the weary many; nor is the delight of the powerful a legitimate cause to inflict the meek multitudes with misery.
Limitation: Sometimes the majority feel pleasure at harming a minority.
IV. What is Duty Ethics?
Both Duty and Virtue Ethics look to the quality of actions and the inherent dignity of all people.
Duty Ethics is based on rules. Immanuel Kant, from 18th Century Germany, described Duty Ethics as the universal command to treat each person as a moral agent and as an end, not as a means or an instrument to the pleasure of another. The intentions of the actor are the determining feature of whether an action is considered moral by Duty Ethics.
Kant called the universal command the Categorical Imperative. It is the unbending rule of morality, applicable in all times and places and situations.
Treating others not as a means but as an end is one way of stating the rule. Also, one can phrase it as reciprocity requires that limitations for others be equally applied to oneself.
Limitation: Sometimes rules do not cover all situations. Sometimes one should lie to protect the life of a friend.
V. What is Virtue Ethics?
Virtue Ethics is derived from the ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle, and seeks to educate character to assume the habit of a moral disposition and character. Moderation is the road to virtue.
Plato and Aristotle advocated living according to a human model of the virtues, the qualities of excellence. “What would the heroic do?”might have been the question of Homer from the earlier days of Greece, but these two philosophers of Athens sought a moral compass.
Thus, the questions became, “What would honesty require?”for example. Plato and Aristotle looked for virtues such as truth, beauty, will power, and justice or proportionality, as well as benevolence, civility, dependability, generosity, loyalty, moderation, patience, and prudence.
Virtue Ethics generally judges character rather than specific actions. Character can be trained or educated. At its best, good character includes as many of the qualities of excellence and becomes a habit.
Limitation: Vague and self-defining, it can be uncritical of specific actions.
VI. What is the Relation between Reason and Natural Law?
Natural Law flows from the order of the universe directly into the reason of humans. The ordered universe is subject to the patterns of Nature, just as reason is subject to the limits of logic. As the unseen judge of the unseen realm of ideas, reason is the best way to understand the Law of Nature, to determine justice, and to develop character. Looking to reason and to conscience, each of us can know Natural Law.
Ancient ideas about the rule of reason still animate discussion of Natural Law. However, Empiricists and others do not ascribe to claims for a superior role for reason.
VII. What is the Source of Human Rights?
Many followers of Natural Law feel it was installed in the heavens by God at the time of creation and in the mind of a human at the moment of birth. Just as the scientific laws of the natural world, such as gravity, cannot be restrained or overruled by humans, so, too, the rules of logic cannot be dissolved or diluted. Equally true, the natural rights of humans endowed by the creator cannot be amended or changed by the actions of humans or their governments. These rights existed since the beginning of time and still reside within every human for no more cause than being born human.
Later thinkers were less concerned with the source of these rights and more interested in identifying them. Such documents as the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution are seen as expressions of these rights. The final version of human rights exists in ultimate, unfettered reason, and can only be known in increasing levels of understanding by human minds, which by nature lack perfection.
A more recent effort to catalogue human rights exists in the U.N. Charter of Human Rights.
VIII. What Are Human Rights?
Discussions of rights today are the most likely to incorporate recent court cases and legal reasoning. From the time of the writings of John Locke through the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights four hundred years later, our understanding of the extent of rights has grown. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," written in the 1776 Declaration of Independence may sound vague.
However, a "paid two-week vacation every year for every employee working at least 35 hours per week for 50 weeks in that year" might be a specific, modern day example of what is stated as a general, human right: “periodic holidays with pay,” which is contained in the 1948 U.N. Declaration.
Natural Rights theorists maintain that financial costs alone are not sufficient to restrict our rights. Further, court cases can summarize the opinions of the legal community for the time in question but can also be the result of political compromise, not eternal standards. Therefore, court decisions alone do not end debate, but only summarize arguments of the day. This is part of the theory of a "Living Constitution."
Limitation: Political arguments can ensue from efforts to define specific Human Rights.
IX. What Are the Ethics of Care?
Finally, the Ethics of Care uses empathy, emotion, and sentiment as a guide to choosing courses of action.
Among those philosophers advocating "sympathy" as a moral compass are David Hume, the skeptic, Scottish philosopher of 18th Century, and his contemporary, Adam Smith, the economist.
In the 20th Century, advocates of "empathy" include U.S. feminists Carol Gilligan, Nell Nodding, and Annette Baier, as well as German, Catholic martyr and phenomenologist Saint Edith Stein.
Further, since caring is viewed as a virtue, many people see Caring Ethics as a specific form of the ancient Virtue Ethics, even though the Greeks used reason alone, and rarely incorporated emotion or empathy into moral decision-making.
The ironies are (1) that “care” was not identified as a virtue until the twentieth-century Feminists discovered it; and
(2) the Virtue theorists from ancient days through the medieval era up until quite recently often agreed with Aristotle that women were incomplete men or lacking in reasoning capacity.
Feminist Ethics, more recently called Caring Ethics, seeks a unique solution to each problem, growing from context and human relatedness to an understanding of the proper objects of care and how to create a web of relationships that best cherishes the individual members of that web while giving each the greatest freedom to empower human growth to achieve self‑actualization. The most subjective of the standards, Feminist or Caring Ethics seeks to increase the reflective care contained within human relationships.
The Ethics of Care require not mere passive avoidance of impeding the moral freedom of others, or limiting our freedom for the sake of the freedom of others. Unlike Human Rights Theory and others, Care requires direct action, in particular affirmative participation in the practice of caring. Empathy and envisioning a higher individual capacity for achievement and self-actualization are tools of the Ethics of Care.
With the tools of empathy and hope, the Ethics of Care requires the discernment of specific, contextual decisions of the extent, nature, and proper objects of care. Some people are more the proper recipients of our care than others, with different expectations and expressions of care for each person in each circumstance.
Limitation: Vague and self-defining, it favors friends and family over strangers.
(Kant gave a universal rule that disregarded relationship; Caring ethics considers relationship almost entirely. Friends or strangers: should both be treated the same? What about one's own infant? Surely an affirmative duty to care for someone is different from a duty to refrain from hurting anyone. Where do we draw the line?)
X. What Is the Benefit of Using these Ethical Systems?
Finally, we see that articulating a consistent standard for moral decision-making a difficult enterprise. Understanding and using the concepts of these few basic systems allow us to use a yardstick our contemporaries can also use and comprehend.
XI. How Do They All Fit Together?
(1) Utilitarianism judges consequences of actions to determine the maximum pleasure for the maximum number of people;
(2) Duty Ethics judges the intentions before the actions;
(3) Virtue Ethics judges the habits of character and moderation to determine excellence and morality;
(4) Natural Law or Legal Rights judges rights from legal or political statements, or from rational examination and understanding of what those rights are, whether God-given or not, which flow to all humans by reason of being born human; and
(5) Caring Ethics, judges action by the level of caring within the web of relationships, nurturing human flourishing within a personal, social context, or the empathetic involvement in the lives of others that envisions the best possible future.
XII. Summary.
Consequences, intentions, character, rights, reason, and caring are all part of judging morality.
Weighing the results of each, we can be sure our actions are moral.
[I have posted some information over at the Philosophy FAQs blog, http://philosophyfaqs.blogspot.com/2010/09/4-what-are-theories-of-ethics.html
It's a summary of a much earlier draft.]
There are so many ways to describe what is right or wrong. We look at some of the most popular and discuss the best points of each, as well as their limitations.
I. Why Do We Not Create Moral Theories from Scratch?
We use the terms, definitions, and descriptions from major philosophers. These have been refined over time by the discussions of reflective, rational thinkers. These give us a common framework for communicating our ideas.
II. What Are the Most Used Ethical Theories?
Ethical theories most used within the study of Applied Ethics are
(1) Utilitarianism, looking to consequences of actions to determine the maximum pleasure for the maximum number of people;
(2) Duty Ethics, looking to the intentions before the actions;
(3) Virtue Ethics, looking at the habits of character and moderation to determine excellence and morality;
(4) Natural Law or Legal Rights, looking to rights from legal or political statements or from rational examination and understanding of what those rights are, whether God-given or not, which flow to all humans by reason of being born human; and
(5) Caring Ethics, judging action by the level of caring for the web of relationships, nurturing human flourishing within a personal, social context, or the empathetic involvement in the lives of others that envisions the best possible future.
III. What is Utilitarianism?
Utilitarianism is empirical; it looks to measurable experience in the material world.
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, from the 19th Century in England, sought an ethical standard that would recognize human pleasure as the good, making its measurement and expansion paramount. Although pleasure might seem to be a subjective standard, Utilitarians judge consequences solely by objective, reasonable standards. Utilitarians do not consider the opinions of those who like pain, for example, to be rational.
In seeking to liberate the wishes of society as a whole from subjugation to the will of the ruling elite, Utilitarian philosophers defined the good as that which creates the maximum pleasure, that is, the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. Thus, the pleasure of the wealthy few does not defeat the wants of the weary many; nor is the delight of the powerful a legitimate cause to inflict the meek multitudes with misery.
Limitation: Sometimes the majority feel pleasure at harming a minority.
IV. What is Duty Ethics?
Both Duty and Virtue Ethics look to the quality of actions and the inherent dignity of all people.
Duty Ethics is based on rules. Immanuel Kant, from 18th Century Germany, described Duty Ethics as the universal command to treat each person as a moral agent and as an end, not as a means or an instrument to the pleasure of another. The intentions of the actor are the determining feature of whether an action is considered moral by Duty Ethics.
Kant called the universal command the Categorical Imperative. It is the unbending rule of morality, applicable in all times and places and situations.
Treating others not as a means but as an end is one way of stating the rule. Also, one can phrase it as reciprocity requires that limitations for others be equally applied to oneself.
Limitation: Sometimes rules do not cover all situations. Sometimes one should lie to protect the life of a friend.
V. What is Virtue Ethics?
Virtue Ethics is derived from the ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle, and seeks to educate character to assume the habit of a moral disposition and character. Moderation is the road to virtue.
Plato and Aristotle advocated living according to a human model of the virtues, the qualities of excellence. “What would the heroic do?”might have been the question of Homer from the earlier days of Greece, but these two philosophers of Athens sought a moral compass.
Thus, the questions became, “What would honesty require?”for example. Plato and Aristotle looked for virtues such as truth, beauty, will power, and justice or proportionality, as well as benevolence, civility, dependability, generosity, loyalty, moderation, patience, and prudence.
Virtue Ethics generally judges character rather than specific actions. Character can be trained or educated. At its best, good character includes as many of the qualities of excellence and becomes a habit.
Limitation: Vague and self-defining, it can be uncritical of specific actions.
VI. What is the Relation between Reason and Natural Law?
Natural Law flows from the order of the universe directly into the reason of humans. The ordered universe is subject to the patterns of Nature, just as reason is subject to the limits of logic. As the unseen judge of the unseen realm of ideas, reason is the best way to understand the Law of Nature, to determine justice, and to develop character. Looking to reason and to conscience, each of us can know Natural Law.
Ancient ideas about the rule of reason still animate discussion of Natural Law. However, Empiricists and others do not ascribe to claims for a superior role for reason.
VII. What is the Source of Human Rights?
Many followers of Natural Law feel it was installed in the heavens by God at the time of creation and in the mind of a human at the moment of birth. Just as the scientific laws of the natural world, such as gravity, cannot be restrained or overruled by humans, so, too, the rules of logic cannot be dissolved or diluted. Equally true, the natural rights of humans endowed by the creator cannot be amended or changed by the actions of humans or their governments. These rights existed since the beginning of time and still reside within every human for no more cause than being born human.
Later thinkers were less concerned with the source of these rights and more interested in identifying them. Such documents as the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution are seen as expressions of these rights. The final version of human rights exists in ultimate, unfettered reason, and can only be known in increasing levels of understanding by human minds, which by nature lack perfection.
A more recent effort to catalogue human rights exists in the U.N. Charter of Human Rights.
VIII. What Are Human Rights?
Discussions of rights today are the most likely to incorporate recent court cases and legal reasoning. From the time of the writings of John Locke through the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights four hundred years later, our understanding of the extent of rights has grown. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," written in the 1776 Declaration of Independence may sound vague.
However, a "paid two-week vacation every year for every employee working at least 35 hours per week for 50 weeks in that year" might be a specific, modern day example of what is stated as a general, human right: “periodic holidays with pay,” which is contained in the 1948 U.N. Declaration.
Natural Rights theorists maintain that financial costs alone are not sufficient to restrict our rights. Further, court cases can summarize the opinions of the legal community for the time in question but can also be the result of political compromise, not eternal standards. Therefore, court decisions alone do not end debate, but only summarize arguments of the day. This is part of the theory of a "Living Constitution."
Limitation: Political arguments can ensue from efforts to define specific Human Rights.
IX. What Are the Ethics of Care?
Finally, the Ethics of Care uses empathy, emotion, and sentiment as a guide to choosing courses of action.
Among those philosophers advocating "sympathy" as a moral compass are David Hume, the skeptic, Scottish philosopher of 18th Century, and his contemporary, Adam Smith, the economist.
In the 20th Century, advocates of "empathy" include U.S. feminists Carol Gilligan, Nell Nodding, and Annette Baier, as well as German, Catholic martyr and phenomenologist Saint Edith Stein.
Further, since caring is viewed as a virtue, many people see Caring Ethics as a specific form of the ancient Virtue Ethics, even though the Greeks used reason alone, and rarely incorporated emotion or empathy into moral decision-making.
The ironies are (1) that “care” was not identified as a virtue until the twentieth-century Feminists discovered it; and
(2) the Virtue theorists from ancient days through the medieval era up until quite recently often agreed with Aristotle that women were incomplete men or lacking in reasoning capacity.
Feminist Ethics, more recently called Caring Ethics, seeks a unique solution to each problem, growing from context and human relatedness to an understanding of the proper objects of care and how to create a web of relationships that best cherishes the individual members of that web while giving each the greatest freedom to empower human growth to achieve self‑actualization. The most subjective of the standards, Feminist or Caring Ethics seeks to increase the reflective care contained within human relationships.
The Ethics of Care require not mere passive avoidance of impeding the moral freedom of others, or limiting our freedom for the sake of the freedom of others. Unlike Human Rights Theory and others, Care requires direct action, in particular affirmative participation in the practice of caring. Empathy and envisioning a higher individual capacity for achievement and self-actualization are tools of the Ethics of Care.
With the tools of empathy and hope, the Ethics of Care requires the discernment of specific, contextual decisions of the extent, nature, and proper objects of care. Some people are more the proper recipients of our care than others, with different expectations and expressions of care for each person in each circumstance.
Limitation: Vague and self-defining, it favors friends and family over strangers.
(Kant gave a universal rule that disregarded relationship; Caring ethics considers relationship almost entirely. Friends or strangers: should both be treated the same? What about one's own infant? Surely an affirmative duty to care for someone is different from a duty to refrain from hurting anyone. Where do we draw the line?)
X. What Is the Benefit of Using these Ethical Systems?
Finally, we see that articulating a consistent standard for moral decision-making a difficult enterprise. Understanding and using the concepts of these few basic systems allow us to use a yardstick our contemporaries can also use and comprehend.
XI. How Do They All Fit Together?
(1) Utilitarianism judges consequences of actions to determine the maximum pleasure for the maximum number of people;
(2) Duty Ethics judges the intentions before the actions;
(3) Virtue Ethics judges the habits of character and moderation to determine excellence and morality;
(4) Natural Law or Legal Rights judges rights from legal or political statements, or from rational examination and understanding of what those rights are, whether God-given or not, which flow to all humans by reason of being born human; and
(5) Caring Ethics, judges action by the level of caring within the web of relationships, nurturing human flourishing within a personal, social context, or the empathetic involvement in the lives of others that envisions the best possible future.
XII. Summary.
Consequences, intentions, character, rights, reason, and caring are all part of judging morality.
Weighing the results of each, we can be sure our actions are moral.
[I have posted some information over at the Philosophy FAQs blog, http://philosophyfaqs.blogspot.com/2010/09/4-what-are-theories-of-ethics.html
It's a summary of a much earlier draft.]
3 - Business Ethics
Business Ethics: What should we do in commerce?
We discuss the application of the ideas about ethics from "the marketplace of ideas" to the "marketplace" of economic transactions.
Concepts of ethics are essential in commerce. Whether we can depend on a handshake, or require attorney-proof written contracts and standards of procedures, we need to know what the risks are, and what the underlying principles are.
Some people in the world of business believe selfishness is necessary and foremost. We discuss this common belief in the section on "Egoism."
Some say that a quality product is what leads to a company that lasts a lifetime or for generations. Then, the business ethics theory is to continue success in developing a good, lasting product line.
Others say that quality service is the key to success. On-going good service and attention to the customer leads to a lasting company. More and more importance is being given to Consumer Service in the contemporary world where digital devices often separate us from direct human contact. Yet, that feeling "special" is what makes customers return. Therefore, the accounting value of "Good Will" is basic to longevity of the business. This financial statement entry looks to the value of the "brand" and the ratio of returning customers. This is a dollar amount that can be evaluated.
Some see the role of stakeholders as paramount. Stockholders (who own shares, an undivided percentage, of the company), the Board of Directors (chosen by the stockholders), the officers of the corporation (chosen by the Board of Directors), managers (hired by the President of the corporation), employees (chosen by the managers), suppliers (chosen by the managers), the community in which the business is located, and the governments of the nation, the state, and the local communities -- all have a stake in the on-going success of the company. Each of them should have an input into the actions of the company that impact their lives and functions. This is a summary of the ethical system that centers on stakeholders.
There are many ideas about business ethics. Our thoughts about ethics in business impact political theories and many other parts of our lives. Our underlying concepts of what is "good business" gauge how we feel government should respond to or regulate business; as well as what we consider success, or what the ancient philosophers called "the Good Life."
Before we can select conclusions about specific ideas about business ethics, we need to have a discussion about the role of selfishness, or egoism in business transactions.
To begin, let's look at "Egoism" itself.
An explanation follows in the next Chapter.
We discuss the application of the ideas about ethics from "the marketplace of ideas" to the "marketplace" of economic transactions.
Concepts of ethics are essential in commerce. Whether we can depend on a handshake, or require attorney-proof written contracts and standards of procedures, we need to know what the risks are, and what the underlying principles are.
Some people in the world of business believe selfishness is necessary and foremost. We discuss this common belief in the section on "Egoism."
Some say that a quality product is what leads to a company that lasts a lifetime or for generations. Then, the business ethics theory is to continue success in developing a good, lasting product line.
Others say that quality service is the key to success. On-going good service and attention to the customer leads to a lasting company. More and more importance is being given to Consumer Service in the contemporary world where digital devices often separate us from direct human contact. Yet, that feeling "special" is what makes customers return. Therefore, the accounting value of "Good Will" is basic to longevity of the business. This financial statement entry looks to the value of the "brand" and the ratio of returning customers. This is a dollar amount that can be evaluated.
Some see the role of stakeholders as paramount. Stockholders (who own shares, an undivided percentage, of the company), the Board of Directors (chosen by the stockholders), the officers of the corporation (chosen by the Board of Directors), managers (hired by the President of the corporation), employees (chosen by the managers), suppliers (chosen by the managers), the community in which the business is located, and the governments of the nation, the state, and the local communities -- all have a stake in the on-going success of the company. Each of them should have an input into the actions of the company that impact their lives and functions. This is a summary of the ethical system that centers on stakeholders.
There are many ideas about business ethics. Our thoughts about ethics in business impact political theories and many other parts of our lives. Our underlying concepts of what is "good business" gauge how we feel government should respond to or regulate business; as well as what we consider success, or what the ancient philosophers called "the Good Life."
Before we can select conclusions about specific ideas about business ethics, we need to have a discussion about the role of selfishness, or egoism in business transactions.
To begin, let's look at "Egoism" itself.
An explanation follows in the next Chapter.
4 - Egoism
Two Philosophies of Egoism: (Often Believed in Psychology, Economics, and Politics)
Selfishness: The Question: Are Humans limited animals, existing only for individual survival? Should they be?
Can there be any ethics or ethical action if we are all controlled by selfishness, or if we should be selfish?
Egoism: Definition: Putting the self first, selfishness.
The philosophies of Egoism come in two very distinct categories:
1. Psychological Egoism argues that we, and every human, are selfish because we have no other choice.
2. Ethical Egoism argues that we do have a choice, and we are ethically required to chose to be selfish.
Sometimes, without thinking, the same person will hold both of these contradictory ideas at the same time.
The Contradiction
Let's talk about the contradiction first, then we will look at what's wrong with Psychological Egoism.
In economic theory, some will argue that we are all selfish and greedy because we can be no other way, and, at the same time, argue that we must be selfish and greedy. Greed, they say, is the only way to survive and is the best way to survive.
This is a contradiction.
If we have no other chose, then we cannot make an ethical decision.
If we have no choice, then we cannot chose to perform good deeds or bad deeds.
If we have no choice, then we cannot say that we should be selfish, because we are biologically forced to act in a selfish way. We cannot say we make an "ethical decision."
We have to critically decide whether we agree that human are always selfish, and therefore lack all ability to make ethical decisions. Then we can conclude whether humans are forced to be selfish, or whether we can and should chose to be selfish, or whether there is some choice other than selfishness.
Psychological Egoism
Psychological Egoism argues that human are always selfish, and therefore lack all ability to make ethical decisions.
However, observation tells us that survival can include decisions that balance, on the one hand, (a) self-interest, such as immediate sensual gratification, and, on the other hand, (b) enlightened self-interest that looks to the benefits of:
(i) delaying gratification, such as gaining a college degree, or
(ii) helping others with the anticipation of, or the side effect of, self-gain.
Survival can include, in addition, not acting selfishly, but instead, taking action to benefit others, which is called altruism.
Survival can also include a decision to hurt others.
We have the power of ethical decision-making to chose between helping others and hurting others. To say that we can only seek self-interest overlooks this basic choice.
To say that we "feel good" when we help others, and, therefore, helping others is selfish, denies that some people can "feel good" when they sometimes do things to harm others.
In short, Psychological Egoism makes no sense because it denies that we all have the choice to help or to hurt others. "Feeling good" about the action does not change whether it was good or bad.
In fact, isn't feeling good about doing the right thing exactly what we want ethical theory to encourage?
Psychological Egoism is a theory deeply embedded in our culture. Even people who do not believe in Darwin's biological theory of the survival of the fittest will stoutly argue for a Darwin Economics, that economically we can only survive through survival of the fittest, by selfish actions, or even harmful ones. Some people insist that especially in economics we have no choice but to act selfishly.
These statement overlook the actions of altruism, charity, kindness to family, friends, and strangers. Each of these can make us "feel good," and each of these, at different times and in differing amounts, can make our survival stronger and more enjoyable.
Psychological Egoism, as I said, is a very popular idea. However, as long as someone keeps acting in ways that do not harm others and bring about a certain amount of harmony with others and well-being, then holding this false idea is not bad in itself. It is confusing, but not necessarily bad.
Next, let's talk about Ethical Egoism.
"Ethical Egoism"
This theory argues we should be selfish, even when it causes harm to others. The only limit is the fear of punishment.
These are not people we want to choose to be our friends.
They cause harm, feel good about it, and feel they are doing the right thing.
However, if we should all seek selfishness only, then do we have a duty to help others be selfish? In fact, to be consistent, shouldn't the ethical egoist insist that others should harm him or her so that others can also be ethical egoists?
This endless circle of harm to others and harm to self is one of the contradictions of "Ethical Egoism."
Another contradiction is that it isn't really a theory of ethics at all. It can be called an anti-ethical theory, but not an ethical one. Ethics is all about making the right choice and doing good. "Ethical Egoism" argues that we should do harm.
Socrates said that ethics means we should, "First, do no harm." Yet, the ethical egoists have no problem with causing harm, don't disapprove of others also causing harm, and, at times, encourage it.
"Ethical egoism" is popular and is advocated in the novels of Ayn Rand, and by some popular politicans.
Selfishness: The Question: Are Humans limited animals, existing only for individual survival? Should they be?
Can there be any ethics or ethical action if we are all controlled by selfishness, or if we should be selfish?
Egoism: Definition: Putting the self first, selfishness.
The philosophies of Egoism come in two very distinct categories:
1. Psychological Egoism argues that we, and every human, are selfish because we have no other choice.
2. Ethical Egoism argues that we do have a choice, and we are ethically required to chose to be selfish.
Sometimes, without thinking, the same person will hold both of these contradictory ideas at the same time.
The Contradiction
Let's talk about the contradiction first, then we will look at what's wrong with Psychological Egoism.
In economic theory, some will argue that we are all selfish and greedy because we can be no other way, and, at the same time, argue that we must be selfish and greedy. Greed, they say, is the only way to survive and is the best way to survive.
This is a contradiction.
If we have no other chose, then we cannot make an ethical decision.
If we have no choice, then we cannot chose to perform good deeds or bad deeds.
If we have no choice, then we cannot say that we should be selfish, because we are biologically forced to act in a selfish way. We cannot say we make an "ethical decision."
We have to critically decide whether we agree that human are always selfish, and therefore lack all ability to make ethical decisions. Then we can conclude whether humans are forced to be selfish, or whether we can and should chose to be selfish, or whether there is some choice other than selfishness.
Psychological Egoism
Psychological Egoism argues that human are always selfish, and therefore lack all ability to make ethical decisions.
However, observation tells us that survival can include decisions that balance, on the one hand, (a) self-interest, such as immediate sensual gratification, and, on the other hand, (b) enlightened self-interest that looks to the benefits of:
(i) delaying gratification, such as gaining a college degree, or
(ii) helping others with the anticipation of, or the side effect of, self-gain.
Survival can include, in addition, not acting selfishly, but instead, taking action to benefit others, which is called altruism.
Survival can also include a decision to hurt others.
We have the power of ethical decision-making to chose between helping others and hurting others. To say that we can only seek self-interest overlooks this basic choice.
To say that we "feel good" when we help others, and, therefore, helping others is selfish, denies that some people can "feel good" when they sometimes do things to harm others.
In short, Psychological Egoism makes no sense because it denies that we all have the choice to help or to hurt others. "Feeling good" about the action does not change whether it was good or bad.
In fact, isn't feeling good about doing the right thing exactly what we want ethical theory to encourage?
Psychological Egoism is a theory deeply embedded in our culture. Even people who do not believe in Darwin's biological theory of the survival of the fittest will stoutly argue for a Darwin Economics, that economically we can only survive through survival of the fittest, by selfish actions, or even harmful ones. Some people insist that especially in economics we have no choice but to act selfishly.
These statement overlook the actions of altruism, charity, kindness to family, friends, and strangers. Each of these can make us "feel good," and each of these, at different times and in differing amounts, can make our survival stronger and more enjoyable.
Psychological Egoism, as I said, is a very popular idea. However, as long as someone keeps acting in ways that do not harm others and bring about a certain amount of harmony with others and well-being, then holding this false idea is not bad in itself. It is confusing, but not necessarily bad.
Next, let's talk about Ethical Egoism.
"Ethical Egoism"
This theory argues we should be selfish, even when it causes harm to others. The only limit is the fear of punishment.
These are not people we want to choose to be our friends.
They cause harm, feel good about it, and feel they are doing the right thing.
However, if we should all seek selfishness only, then do we have a duty to help others be selfish? In fact, to be consistent, shouldn't the ethical egoist insist that others should harm him or her so that others can also be ethical egoists?
This endless circle of harm to others and harm to self is one of the contradictions of "Ethical Egoism."
Another contradiction is that it isn't really a theory of ethics at all. It can be called an anti-ethical theory, but not an ethical one. Ethics is all about making the right choice and doing good. "Ethical Egoism" argues that we should do harm.
Socrates said that ethics means we should, "First, do no harm." Yet, the ethical egoists have no problem with causing harm, don't disapprove of others also causing harm, and, at times, encourage it.
"Ethical egoism" is popular and is advocated in the novels of Ayn Rand, and by some popular politicans.
5 - Am I, or Am I Not? - Metaphysics
Metaphysics: Do We, or Does the World, Exist?
This seems like such an easy question, but, like defining ethics, turns into a knot that requires careful examination.
Am I a dream or a caterpillar, or both?
Usually metaphysical discussion begins with whether God exists, but we have addressed that in detail above. Let us move onto the next two questions: Do we, or does the world, exist?
First, let's talk about us.
Can we say, "I think I am?" This is the question that kicked off the modern world, with Descartes in the early 1600's. The early printing press, at roughly the same time, helped to move learning outside the monestary and into the libraries of universities and of the wealthy. A democratization of knowledge led to questioning of the assumptions of the past. Indirectly, Descartes' scandalous question of whether the self exists was doubting of the existence of the human "soul."
Does thinking mean we are real?
(1) "Does consciousness of being conscious mean the same as self-consciousness?" This is a question asked by the phenomologists, adherants of an European contemporary Philosophy. It's tongue-twister and much fun to consider. Generally, we agree that self-consciousness is something special to humans. However, I have known cats and dogs who appear to "pose" for a camera. Isn't that a kind of self-awareness?
(2) "Can cognition be reduced to calculation?" This is a consideration of current Cognitive Scientists, who question the physical nature of thinking: how much of thinking is a result of biological processes (rather that an inner something that is other than, and more, than merely physical). They also question whether human thought can be mimicked by artificial intelligence. Can human thinking be mechanized, digitized, or biologically copied. Further, can DNA alterations increase the capacity for thinking or inhibit it?
(3) Human thinking does seem to be vulnerable to physical injury of the skull and brain. Yet, rubbing the scalp doesn't seem to help. Small heads seems to think just as well as big heads. Calculators and electronic digital computers are fun and at times amazing in their speedy achievements in mathematics and database searching. Yet, creativity alludes these devices. Randomness is possible, but unguided, intentional creation of tools or art is not. The "Cognitive Science" of studying thinking continues.
(4) Some of the more colorful and enticing examples of examining whether the self exists resides in the poetry of the ancient Chinese Daoist, Chuang Tze. Living before Confucius, roughly 500 b.c., Chuang Tze wrote he had a dream in which he was a caterpillar, then questioned whether he was actually a caterpillar dreaming. What a lovely way of asking whether life is just a dream. I believe he leaves the question unanswered, giving us, at least, a higher respect for caterpillar and butterflies.
(5) In 1637, in Discourse on Method, Descartes, French, also questioned whether life was just a dream. He examined whether he existed, whether God existed, and whether the world existed. As the first of the Rationalists, he began the Modern era.
He decided he must exist because, even if he doubted everything he knew or felt, the one thing he could not doubt was that he was doubting. Doubting requires thinking. In short, his thinking was sufficient proof that he existed. "I think, therefore I am," became the most famous sentence of all of Philosophy.
Next, let us ask, "Is the world real?"
(1) To decide whether the world existed, the next conclusion Descartes made was that God existed. Most Philosophers, particularly the contemporary ones, have moved in the opposite direction, accepting the material world but doubting the need for a Creator of it.
If life was nothing but a dream, or, as Descartes described it, if in our sleep all the world disappeared, only to come back into being when we awake, then all we experience is a delusion. What child has not questioned whether the world goes away when he or she falls asleep?
How do we know whether our sensory perception is a deception? To maintain such a large illusion would require a powerful demon. Such a world would be without meaning, and such a powerful demon would be a great evil. However, Descartes knew that God is good, and therefore would not let us be deceived in all that we experience. Because God is good, therefore, the world must exist.
Descartes argued for dualism: both thinking and the material world are real, but are two separate things, running along parallel courses.
(2) By comparison, the two other famous Rationalists, Spinoza, Jewish-Dutch, and Leibnitz, German, were monists. They both probably studied under Descartes when he was in Amsterdam. They argued that mind and matter are one. Spinoza said everything is only a part of "the infinite and the eternal." There is only one substance.
On the contrary, Leibnitz said there is only one substance, a monad, of which everything else is made. Both argued for Oneness, Spinoza for a universal, and Leibnitz for the smallest particular. All is one: Spinoza saying all is a part of One, and Leibnitz saying that all is made up of an infinite number of an indivisible One.
(3) Interestingly, in the Nineteenth Century, the Pragmatist William James argued that all is one, that everything is made of experience. We know experience from the inner world and from the outer world. One we call thinking, and the other we call material, but they are both aspects of the same thing, experience.
(4) In Twentieth Century European philosophy, intentionality was discussed as the basis of personal existence. Both consciousness and the object of consciousness were generally viewed as a product of intentionality. The self as subject, and the material world as object, came into existence out of intention. However, existence, or metaphysics, was not considered as important a question as how to respond to where we find ourselves. Pondering ultimate reality was not as central as asking how to live.
In summary, the two most famous philosophical answers to metaphysics are (a) dualism, claiming that mind and matter are separate, and, on the other hand, and much less commonly accepted, (b) monism, claiming that all is one.
In Theology, or in the study of world religions, the statement that all is one is sometimes viewed as a description of the religious experience of mysticism, but in the rational world of Philosophy there is no such implication. Some people overlap their discussions of Theology and Philosophy, but mysticism is solely a theological perspective.
These are some of the central threads of metaphysics, from ancient China until the present day. However, many of Twentieth Century philosophers in the English-speaking world are Skeptics. They are not ready to accept easily that the self or the world exist. The discussion of Skepticism follows.
This seems like such an easy question, but, like defining ethics, turns into a knot that requires careful examination.
Am I a dream or a caterpillar, or both?
Usually metaphysical discussion begins with whether God exists, but we have addressed that in detail above. Let us move onto the next two questions: Do we, or does the world, exist?
First, let's talk about us.
Can we say, "I think I am?" This is the question that kicked off the modern world, with Descartes in the early 1600's. The early printing press, at roughly the same time, helped to move learning outside the monestary and into the libraries of universities and of the wealthy. A democratization of knowledge led to questioning of the assumptions of the past. Indirectly, Descartes' scandalous question of whether the self exists was doubting of the existence of the human "soul."
Does thinking mean we are real?
(1) "Does consciousness of being conscious mean the same as self-consciousness?" This is a question asked by the phenomologists, adherants of an European contemporary Philosophy. It's tongue-twister and much fun to consider. Generally, we agree that self-consciousness is something special to humans. However, I have known cats and dogs who appear to "pose" for a camera. Isn't that a kind of self-awareness?
(2) "Can cognition be reduced to calculation?" This is a consideration of current Cognitive Scientists, who question the physical nature of thinking: how much of thinking is a result of biological processes (rather that an inner something that is other than, and more, than merely physical). They also question whether human thought can be mimicked by artificial intelligence. Can human thinking be mechanized, digitized, or biologically copied. Further, can DNA alterations increase the capacity for thinking or inhibit it?
(3) Human thinking does seem to be vulnerable to physical injury of the skull and brain. Yet, rubbing the scalp doesn't seem to help. Small heads seems to think just as well as big heads. Calculators and electronic digital computers are fun and at times amazing in their speedy achievements in mathematics and database searching. Yet, creativity alludes these devices. Randomness is possible, but unguided, intentional creation of tools or art is not. The "Cognitive Science" of studying thinking continues.
(4) Some of the more colorful and enticing examples of examining whether the self exists resides in the poetry of the ancient Chinese Daoist, Chuang Tze. Living before Confucius, roughly 500 b.c., Chuang Tze wrote he had a dream in which he was a caterpillar, then questioned whether he was actually a caterpillar dreaming. What a lovely way of asking whether life is just a dream. I believe he leaves the question unanswered, giving us, at least, a higher respect for caterpillar and butterflies.
(5) In 1637, in Discourse on Method, Descartes, French, also questioned whether life was just a dream. He examined whether he existed, whether God existed, and whether the world existed. As the first of the Rationalists, he began the Modern era.
He decided he must exist because, even if he doubted everything he knew or felt, the one thing he could not doubt was that he was doubting. Doubting requires thinking. In short, his thinking was sufficient proof that he existed. "I think, therefore I am," became the most famous sentence of all of Philosophy.
Next, let us ask, "Is the world real?"
(1) To decide whether the world existed, the next conclusion Descartes made was that God existed. Most Philosophers, particularly the contemporary ones, have moved in the opposite direction, accepting the material world but doubting the need for a Creator of it.
If life was nothing but a dream, or, as Descartes described it, if in our sleep all the world disappeared, only to come back into being when we awake, then all we experience is a delusion. What child has not questioned whether the world goes away when he or she falls asleep?
How do we know whether our sensory perception is a deception? To maintain such a large illusion would require a powerful demon. Such a world would be without meaning, and such a powerful demon would be a great evil. However, Descartes knew that God is good, and therefore would not let us be deceived in all that we experience. Because God is good, therefore, the world must exist.
Descartes argued for dualism: both thinking and the material world are real, but are two separate things, running along parallel courses.
(2) By comparison, the two other famous Rationalists, Spinoza, Jewish-Dutch, and Leibnitz, German, were monists. They both probably studied under Descartes when he was in Amsterdam. They argued that mind and matter are one. Spinoza said everything is only a part of "the infinite and the eternal." There is only one substance.
On the contrary, Leibnitz said there is only one substance, a monad, of which everything else is made. Both argued for Oneness, Spinoza for a universal, and Leibnitz for the smallest particular. All is one: Spinoza saying all is a part of One, and Leibnitz saying that all is made up of an infinite number of an indivisible One.
(3) Interestingly, in the Nineteenth Century, the Pragmatist William James argued that all is one, that everything is made of experience. We know experience from the inner world and from the outer world. One we call thinking, and the other we call material, but they are both aspects of the same thing, experience.
(4) In Twentieth Century European philosophy, intentionality was discussed as the basis of personal existence. Both consciousness and the object of consciousness were generally viewed as a product of intentionality. The self as subject, and the material world as object, came into existence out of intention. However, existence, or metaphysics, was not considered as important a question as how to respond to where we find ourselves. Pondering ultimate reality was not as central as asking how to live.
In summary, the two most famous philosophical answers to metaphysics are (a) dualism, claiming that mind and matter are separate, and, on the other hand, and much less commonly accepted, (b) monism, claiming that all is one.
In Theology, or in the study of world religions, the statement that all is one is sometimes viewed as a description of the religious experience of mysticism, but in the rational world of Philosophy there is no such implication. Some people overlap their discussions of Theology and Philosophy, but mysticism is solely a theological perspective.
These are some of the central threads of metaphysics, from ancient China until the present day. However, many of Twentieth Century philosophers in the English-speaking world are Skeptics. They are not ready to accept easily that the self or the world exist. The discussion of Skepticism follows.
6 - Epistemology, or Why I Am Skeptical about Skepticism
How Do We Know What We Know, and How Do We Know that We Know It?
The first step is to determine "how would we know if we knew."
The second step is to apply that principle of "how we would know" to that which is proposed to be known. Then, using that principle, we would evaluate whether the proposed knowledge was in fact knowledge. Then, voila, we would "know that we knew it," meaning that which was proposed to be known was in fact and by proof actually known.
It seems so simple.
The Skeptics have been arguing about this for centuries. From some of the Sophists of ancient Greece, in the 5th Century, B.C., to David Hume, the Scottish Philosopher of the 1700's, their consensus has been, first, that there is not a knowable self to perceive, and, second, that the sensory perceptions of the world are not trustworthy. To whom or to what the senses would be trustworthy is not determinable, because there is no recognized entity, a self, to know.
Rather than feeling downcast at having the whole world thrown into this realm of the unknowable, Skeptics are elated.
Theologians, on the other hand, relegate status of the Unknowable to God. There is a whole body of mystical writings of the Christian authors, as well as most of the other major religions, that describe or define God as the ultimately Unknowable. The more we claim to know about God, they say, the more we realize God extends beyond our grasp. Whether or not we can know the material world is generally agreed to be by virtue of Divine Grace or by virtue of Divinely bestowed reason.
Scientists, by comparison, tend to agree that (1) the wholeness of the universe, or (2) the underlying principles, such as universal laws of physics, or (3) the mathematical formulas that represent the universe, or (4) the exactitude of measurement, or any, or all, or any combination of these are not truly knowable. The predictability and measurability of the universe bogs down almost completely by the time one investigates the sub-atomic world of the fuzzy particle and wave duality. At that level, they claim, the very effort of measuring alters that which is being measured. Knowability, then, seems to depend upon the perspective of the observer. Reality shifts according to where one stands. Ultimate knowledge is unknowable until there is an ultimate measure, or an ultimate or universal perspective. Seeking a "unified theory" of the laws of physics has been an investigation of central importance to Twentieth Century.
But is a knowledge of formulas the same as knowledge of that which they are said to represent? The formulas are not the things they are said to represent. The map is not the territory.
Through all of this deliberation, by theologian or by scientist, the Skeptics are elated by the vastness of that which they do not know. Knowing more of what they do not know, the more they know they have investigated the possibilities and found them lacking.
The one principle to which they adhere is they will not accept anything as true that cannot be proven through reason. All those things that are unreasonable, or unprovable through reason, are unknowable.
They claim to know a principle, namely reason, by which they can know what they know, or what they do not know. The knowable, then, is the principle that reason is the ultimate measure.
As much as I love reason, I do have to point out that this is a contradiction. If we do know something, such as what reason is, or what a reasonable proof would be, then we are saying that we do know something, even if it is an intangible something.
Here, we are back to the inherent contradiction of the once-popular Logical Positivists. They claimed, as their principle, that which was measurable was real, and the more something was measurable, the more real it was. This is a materialist claim. Following this, they claimed that the more unmeasurable something is, the less real it is.
This logical-positivist principle was a very useful theory to sweep away a bunch of cluttering ideas from the previous centuries that had resulted in cultural confusion and, they hinted, ultimately, in the passions of the wars of Europe. Without unmeasurable theories, such as, we might guess, loyalty to king or country in the form of patriotism, or theories of forms of government or economics, there would no longer be anything, save possibly territory boundary lines, over which to fight. Ironically, in their own way, they were idealists. Doing away with the control or sway of immeasurable ideas would lead an ideal world without war or persecution. Jews could live freely, and the stability of science would abound: very good goals which were considered radical in their day.
Then, sometime in about the middle of the Twentieth Century, it was pointed out that the whole theory rested on an inherent contradiction: Logical-Positivism was based on a principle, the principle that that which was measurable was more real, and the more measurable something was, the more real it was, and the more unmeasurable something was, the more unreal it was; yet that principle was itself unmeasurable.
Using measurability as a standard meant there was a standard, but that standard could not be measured, or at least not measured by anything that was measurable. Hence, it was a contradiction, one contained within the theory itself, so it was self-contradictory, or inherently contradictory. It was a contradiction under its own terms. It failed to meet its own standard.
Logical-Positivism was upheld by many respected Philosophers and still lingers on today in some fine universities. Relegating Philosophy to the analysis of language alone has been a popular version.
I would propose, that, in a parallel manner, the Skeptics are self-defeating.
The Skeptics' claim that reason is the ultimate principle of knowability is itself a claim of knowability. They claim, first of all, that reason is real, which I am willing to grant; but they claim, additionally, that it is the only way by which we can know the world, and that if something in the world did meet the standard of proof through reason, then, that "thing" would be knowable.
If reason or proof is knowable, then there is something which is knowable, and the claim of unknowability of the world falls.
Now, some Skeptics, such as Hume, would claim that since the principle of causality can be shown to be tenuous or even wrong, then the principles of reason themselves fall aside, and there is no reason by which to know whether the world is reasonable.
Hume claimed that we could not prove that one thing caused another, but only that one thing followed the only. The actually causal link could not be established. Does one clock striking twelve cause another clock to strike twelve? Following this metaphor, he argued that all we can truly know is that one thing follows the other in time, but not that one thing reached out and caused a next thing to happen.
Therefore, some Skeptics think that even reason cannot be trusted. Since they have no remaining tool by which to know whether the sensations of the world are real and whether the world those sensations represent are real, then we can never know if anything is real. Not only is the material world untrustworthy, but so is the interior world of reason.
Ultimate Skeptics, like Christian mystics, rejoice in the trueness of Unknowability.
Ultimate Skeptics refuse to accept there is any way we can know what we know.
Rather than be gloomy, Hume, for example, said we should live by common sense.
I respond that common sense is exactly where we started in the first place, before we began this study of whether we as human being are capable of knowledge. I and others are disappointed in the resignation of many Skeptics to an unreasonable, unknowable world. What a useless effort. What a disappointment.
Why did we bother?
No wonder anti-Philosophers laugh at Philosophy as a waste of time.
At the very least, I think we can accept the principle of the Pragmatists, the first occurring school thought of US Philosophy, who claim those ideas which are the most useful are likely to be the most true. This is a very practical idea, which seems to fit a very practical nation. Despite an apparent lapse into patriotism, which taken to an extreme, "my country, right or wrong," has led to many wrong actions, despite this apparent flaw, the notion of accepting as knowable that which works has a distinct appeal to reason.
Pragmatism hosts hope for a sufficiently knowable world for humans to act and think and flourish. Thought and things are pragmatically knowable.
Later, the Phenomenologists and Existentialists of Continental Europe in the Twentieth Century accepted as given the "essence" of things in order to decide how to act, with the emphasis on action taking priority over the question of the knowledge of being. Sartre, like Socrates, placed emphasis on ethics over epistemology. Later, the Spanish Existential, Ortega, claimed we are all writing our own autobiographies. This outlook puts attention, not on whether things exist, but on individual choice and action. We act within that condition in which we find ourselves. The phenomena of being is accepted as a basis of decision and action.
Many recent Skeptics have leaned over into logic, such as Russell; and linguististics, such as Wittgenstein. Empistemology is left behind by some as ultimately unknowable, and, therefore, uninteresting.
However, just because a question is difficult does not mean, I think, that it should be ignored. Nor, just because an answer is difficult to phrase does not mean effort should not be made. The study of past attempts to describe "how we know" helps to scratch the itch of intellect and lifts our species beyond others. Even if our reach were always to exceed our grasp, the attempt is ennobling.
Again, I say, at the very least, Pragmatism hosts hope for a sufficiently knowable world for humans to act and think and flourish.
The first step is to determine "how would we know if we knew."
The second step is to apply that principle of "how we would know" to that which is proposed to be known. Then, using that principle, we would evaluate whether the proposed knowledge was in fact knowledge. Then, voila, we would "know that we knew it," meaning that which was proposed to be known was in fact and by proof actually known.
It seems so simple.
The Skeptics have been arguing about this for centuries. From some of the Sophists of ancient Greece, in the 5th Century, B.C., to David Hume, the Scottish Philosopher of the 1700's, their consensus has been, first, that there is not a knowable self to perceive, and, second, that the sensory perceptions of the world are not trustworthy. To whom or to what the senses would be trustworthy is not determinable, because there is no recognized entity, a self, to know.
Rather than feeling downcast at having the whole world thrown into this realm of the unknowable, Skeptics are elated.
Theologians, on the other hand, relegate status of the Unknowable to God. There is a whole body of mystical writings of the Christian authors, as well as most of the other major religions, that describe or define God as the ultimately Unknowable. The more we claim to know about God, they say, the more we realize God extends beyond our grasp. Whether or not we can know the material world is generally agreed to be by virtue of Divine Grace or by virtue of Divinely bestowed reason.
Scientists, by comparison, tend to agree that (1) the wholeness of the universe, or (2) the underlying principles, such as universal laws of physics, or (3) the mathematical formulas that represent the universe, or (4) the exactitude of measurement, or any, or all, or any combination of these are not truly knowable. The predictability and measurability of the universe bogs down almost completely by the time one investigates the sub-atomic world of the fuzzy particle and wave duality. At that level, they claim, the very effort of measuring alters that which is being measured. Knowability, then, seems to depend upon the perspective of the observer. Reality shifts according to where one stands. Ultimate knowledge is unknowable until there is an ultimate measure, or an ultimate or universal perspective. Seeking a "unified theory" of the laws of physics has been an investigation of central importance to Twentieth Century.
But is a knowledge of formulas the same as knowledge of that which they are said to represent? The formulas are not the things they are said to represent. The map is not the territory.
Through all of this deliberation, by theologian or by scientist, the Skeptics are elated by the vastness of that which they do not know. Knowing more of what they do not know, the more they know they have investigated the possibilities and found them lacking.
The one principle to which they adhere is they will not accept anything as true that cannot be proven through reason. All those things that are unreasonable, or unprovable through reason, are unknowable.
They claim to know a principle, namely reason, by which they can know what they know, or what they do not know. The knowable, then, is the principle that reason is the ultimate measure.
As much as I love reason, I do have to point out that this is a contradiction. If we do know something, such as what reason is, or what a reasonable proof would be, then we are saying that we do know something, even if it is an intangible something.
Here, we are back to the inherent contradiction of the once-popular Logical Positivists. They claimed, as their principle, that which was measurable was real, and the more something was measurable, the more real it was. This is a materialist claim. Following this, they claimed that the more unmeasurable something is, the less real it is.
This logical-positivist principle was a very useful theory to sweep away a bunch of cluttering ideas from the previous centuries that had resulted in cultural confusion and, they hinted, ultimately, in the passions of the wars of Europe. Without unmeasurable theories, such as, we might guess, loyalty to king or country in the form of patriotism, or theories of forms of government or economics, there would no longer be anything, save possibly territory boundary lines, over which to fight. Ironically, in their own way, they were idealists. Doing away with the control or sway of immeasurable ideas would lead an ideal world without war or persecution. Jews could live freely, and the stability of science would abound: very good goals which were considered radical in their day.
Then, sometime in about the middle of the Twentieth Century, it was pointed out that the whole theory rested on an inherent contradiction: Logical-Positivism was based on a principle, the principle that that which was measurable was more real, and the more measurable something was, the more real it was, and the more unmeasurable something was, the more unreal it was; yet that principle was itself unmeasurable.
Using measurability as a standard meant there was a standard, but that standard could not be measured, or at least not measured by anything that was measurable. Hence, it was a contradiction, one contained within the theory itself, so it was self-contradictory, or inherently contradictory. It was a contradiction under its own terms. It failed to meet its own standard.
Logical-Positivism was upheld by many respected Philosophers and still lingers on today in some fine universities. Relegating Philosophy to the analysis of language alone has been a popular version.
I would propose, that, in a parallel manner, the Skeptics are self-defeating.
The Skeptics' claim that reason is the ultimate principle of knowability is itself a claim of knowability. They claim, first of all, that reason is real, which I am willing to grant; but they claim, additionally, that it is the only way by which we can know the world, and that if something in the world did meet the standard of proof through reason, then, that "thing" would be knowable.
If reason or proof is knowable, then there is something which is knowable, and the claim of unknowability of the world falls.
Now, some Skeptics, such as Hume, would claim that since the principle of causality can be shown to be tenuous or even wrong, then the principles of reason themselves fall aside, and there is no reason by which to know whether the world is reasonable.
Hume claimed that we could not prove that one thing caused another, but only that one thing followed the only. The actually causal link could not be established. Does one clock striking twelve cause another clock to strike twelve? Following this metaphor, he argued that all we can truly know is that one thing follows the other in time, but not that one thing reached out and caused a next thing to happen.
Therefore, some Skeptics think that even reason cannot be trusted. Since they have no remaining tool by which to know whether the sensations of the world are real and whether the world those sensations represent are real, then we can never know if anything is real. Not only is the material world untrustworthy, but so is the interior world of reason.
Ultimate Skeptics, like Christian mystics, rejoice in the trueness of Unknowability.
Ultimate Skeptics refuse to accept there is any way we can know what we know.
Rather than be gloomy, Hume, for example, said we should live by common sense.
I respond that common sense is exactly where we started in the first place, before we began this study of whether we as human being are capable of knowledge. I and others are disappointed in the resignation of many Skeptics to an unreasonable, unknowable world. What a useless effort. What a disappointment.
Why did we bother?
No wonder anti-Philosophers laugh at Philosophy as a waste of time.
At the very least, I think we can accept the principle of the Pragmatists, the first occurring school thought of US Philosophy, who claim those ideas which are the most useful are likely to be the most true. This is a very practical idea, which seems to fit a very practical nation. Despite an apparent lapse into patriotism, which taken to an extreme, "my country, right or wrong," has led to many wrong actions, despite this apparent flaw, the notion of accepting as knowable that which works has a distinct appeal to reason.
Pragmatism hosts hope for a sufficiently knowable world for humans to act and think and flourish. Thought and things are pragmatically knowable.
Later, the Phenomenologists and Existentialists of Continental Europe in the Twentieth Century accepted as given the "essence" of things in order to decide how to act, with the emphasis on action taking priority over the question of the knowledge of being. Sartre, like Socrates, placed emphasis on ethics over epistemology. Later, the Spanish Existential, Ortega, claimed we are all writing our own autobiographies. This outlook puts attention, not on whether things exist, but on individual choice and action. We act within that condition in which we find ourselves. The phenomena of being is accepted as a basis of decision and action.
Many recent Skeptics have leaned over into logic, such as Russell; and linguististics, such as Wittgenstein. Empistemology is left behind by some as ultimately unknowable, and, therefore, uninteresting.
However, just because a question is difficult does not mean, I think, that it should be ignored. Nor, just because an answer is difficult to phrase does not mean effort should not be made. The study of past attempts to describe "how we know" helps to scratch the itch of intellect and lifts our species beyond others. Even if our reach were always to exceed our grasp, the attempt is ennobling.
Again, I say, at the very least, Pragmatism hosts hope for a sufficiently knowable world for humans to act and think and flourish.
7 - Do We Need Others?
Political Philosophy: Can we put into effect our best ideas about ourselves when we work together in groups to govern our actions?
If the least government is the best, then should we all move to the Sudan?
If police and armies are all we want, then who picks up the garbage?
How does the role of government protect and encourage individual desire and achievement?
---These are some of the questions of contemporary contention.
First, let's spin through some of the ideas of the great thinkers of the past.
Then, spin down to the bottom for a summary and conclusion to answer the conflicts of today.
(Yes, it is longer than I expected, but the sections are numbered, so you can find and read your favorites.)
(1) Aristotle identified three forms of government, both in their good stages and in their bad stages. "Democracy" means rule by the people, but at its worst is rule by a mob. "Oligarchy" means rule by the best, but at its worst is rule by a small group of dictators. "Monarchy" is rule by one, which can be a wise individual, or a terrible tyrant.
Further, he said there was a cycle among the three of them. Governments flow from one to the next, probably starting off in the good stage, then degenerating into the negative, until it was overthrown by the next form of government; and so on through all three. Democracy to mob, defeated (militarily?) by oligarchy that becomes a group of competing dictators, until one dictator emerges, who, once comfortable with power, might become a skillful leader.
Athens was ruled by several styles of government in a short period, from the uncle of Plato, who was an oligarch, to Socrates, who was given the death penalty by a democracy that Plato considered a mob, on through the tyranny of Alexander the Great, who ruled Athens at the time of Aristotle. As a child Alexander had been tutored by Aristotle. Rather than becoming a Philosopher-King, Alexander became a tyrant. Yet, he carried the philosophy, language, and culture of ancient Greece across much of the Middle East.
Rome, on the other hand, was a democracy for 500 years, ruled by an elected Senate, until their military campaigns across the Mediterranean. Over the next 500 years of their 1000 years, their conquests led to more and more treasure and slaves being sent back to Rome. The slaves were bought by the wealthy. The small farmers could not compete with the slave labor farms and found themselves going out of business. They went to Rome to find work. The only work was to join the military and continue the conquests. More treasure and slaves were sent back to Rome. More small farmers failed.
The wealthy generals, farmers, and bankers became more and more wealthy. The ruling Senators were these wealthy men. An oligarchy emerged, and then Julius Caesar defeated them to became the dictator. Julius and his nephew Augustus, who followed him, and was Caesar at the time of the birth of Jesus, brought stability to Rome, but at a cost of a line of rulers of brutality and capriciousness. (The word "capricious" meaning random or without forethought, comes from the name of the Island of Capri, where the Caesars spent their summers.)
The democracy was long disappeared.
(2) Machiavelli, from the 1500's in Italy, is said to have favored a cunning, amoral tyrant. However, reading more of his works than just his famous one, The Prince, shows that he favored a republic. Nevertheless, his name is still in use to describe a tyrant who maintains power at all costs.
(3) The history of the British Isles shows waves of conquests by Anglos, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, each bringing their own law. William the Conqueror, beginning in 1066, spread the reign of Norman kings over local, titled rulers who maintained their own small armies. The Norman kings centralized more and more power. Henry II solidified control and established a court system across his territory. His son, King Richard the Lionhearted, along with the majority of the king's army, departed the country on an expedition to the Crusades. Left behind, his brother, Prince John, had little power to resist the claims by the titled landowners to sign the Magna Charta, in the 1200's, and have his power limited by the House of Lords.
A dictatorship became an oligarchy.
House of Commons, elected commoners who did not have hereditary titles, were the other side of Parliament. Under Prime Minister Oliver Cromwell, the House of Commons beheaded King Charles I. This was followed by a Civil War over how much power the Parliament or the king would have. After one king was returned to power and was then beheaded by Parliament, the following king, at the Restoration of 1660, observed a careful balance with the legislature. For example, all demands for taxes first had to be presented to, and passed by, the House of Commons.
An oligarchy became a democracy. (Some people make a careful distinction between a democracy meaning direct rule by the people, also called participatory democracy, as compared to a republic, where the people elect representatives who rule.) The history of Britain then became continued civil reforms to grant the right to vote to more people, and to limit the rights of the nobles and lords. The government became more and more democratic.
(4) Thomas Hobbes, an Englishman of the 1600's, writing during the time of the English Civil War, said in a state of nature, man is a selfish animal at constant war with all other men. They live out lives which are "nasty, brutish, and short." Constant fear of violent death causes men to come together to create a state. They create a "social contract" to surrender their "natural rights" to an absolute sovereign. Hobbes challenged the doctrine of the divine right of kings by saying the power of the sovereign derived originally from the people. However, he said the monarch was absolute and not subject to acts of Parliament.
(5) Jean Jacques Rousseau, French, of the 1700's, called for a return to nature and was the father of Romanticism, saying men are by nature good, but in society are not. The "social contract" means government flows from the consent of the governed, who can withdraw their consent. In theory, "the advantages of a state of nature would be combined with the advantages of social life."
(6) John Locke, an Englishman of the 1600's, followed Hobbes in saying the state was formed by "social contract." However, unlike Hobbes, he believed in the natural goodness of humanity. He said the state should follow Natural Law, from which were derived "Human Rights," whereby all men were equal in having a right to "life, health, liberty, or possessions." An advocate of Democracy, Locke developed the idea of governmental checks and balances.
All four, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke, agreed humans cannot live successfully without government.
(7) Thomas Jefferson, U.S., 1700's, altered the rights named by Locke from "life, liberty, and property," to those listed in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In doing so, he removed any reference in the document to a claimed right to property of slaves. He reached back to Aristotle's idea of the Good Life (the pursuit of happiness). Following Locke, Jefferson felt it was the role of government to allow individuals to reach their own happiness. Government should allow the individual to flourish.
The ideals of rule by consent of the governed under a social contract, the Constitution, with a balance of powers, became the foundation of the government of the United States. The Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, specified rights remaining with the people.
(8) Rugged individualism was a U.S. theory based on the need to have lonely pioneers settle across a vast land, often living great distances from each other. Self-sufficient survival was often necessary. Farmers who grew everything they ate needed few government services, such as currency, roads, and the Post Office.
Thomas Jefferson envisioned an ideal government based on independent farmers, even though he owned nearly 200 slaves. As President, he made the Louisiana Purchase in 1802, doubling the size of the country, inviting westward expansion.
In the middle of the 1800's, New England essay writers and poets, such as Emerson and Thoreau, popularized Transcendentalism, a Romantic movement, with a get-back-to-nature theme, an optimistic view of self-reliant individualism, and with rejection of traditional authority.
Later becoming an excuse for anti-intellectualism, this Harvard-based system claimed personal intuition as the best source of knowledge. Mystics but not Christians, the Transcendentalists saw divinity in humanity and in nature. Their ideals of self-reliant individualism were absorbed by traditional U.S. Christians.
Rugged individualism has become a basis of U.S. libertarianism.
(9) Hegel, a German of the 1700's, claimed the state is the embodiment of the ultimate ideal, and the state's highest form, monarchy.
"In Hegelian dialectic, one concept (thesis) inevitably generates its opposite (antithesis), and the interaction of these leads to a new concept (synthesis). This in turn becomes the thesis of a new triad. This dynamic system flowed through history to reach absolute Idea." The Columbia Encyclopedia.
Hegelian dialectic, an Idealist theory of government based on a view of constant progress in history, became the theoretical basis of the two major forms of totalitarianism of the Twentieth Century, Nazism and Communism.
Totalitarianism differed from dictatorship in that in addition to control over the physical aspects of government and economy, it claimed control over thought and required adherence to a set of beliefs; a system comparable to rule by religious bodies.
(10) Fascism took Hegel's ideas in order to envision imperial expansion and conquest of neighboring nations. A panel of military and economic leaders would be the oligarchy that supported an absolute monarch.
(11) Nazism was based on fascism and incorporated ideas of national superiority of so great an extent that other peoples should be wiped out. Hitler not only wanted to kill all Jews, he wanted their money. He also wanted to wipe out Gypsies and gays. (However, when the Allies liberated the death camps, the gays were imprisoned to serve out their terms because they were considered "criminals.")
65 Million people, military and civilian, died in World War II.
(12) Marx envisioned history as dynamic, changing, using the three part dialectic which Hegel had described as being Ideal, as, instead, being material. He called this "dialectical materialism."
He predicted freeing labor (the working class) from oppressing owners of capitol (money and the means of production) (meaning, the ruling class). The working class would then rule the oppressors, the economic elite, (meaning, the ruling class), as a result of violent revolution, resulting in Communism, an utopia in which all were equal in rights, status, and material wealth.
Marx famously said "Religion is the opium of the people," and insisted all religion should wiped out. It kept the people asleep to the awareness of the oppression they were under, control by an international economic elite, the global ruling class.
(13) Socialism was a reform movement in England that sought greater voting rights and fairer taxes to ease the burden on the average man from the aristocracy who owned most of the land and the economic system.
Some people viewed Socialism as an intermediate stage that might be a part of an unstoppable historical march from monarchy to Communism. However, for Marx, Socialism was totally unacceptable because of its innate inequality. He rejected socialism because it was not idealistic. Only revolution would be able to bring about the complete change to Communism that he wanted.
(14) John Dewey, Twentieth Century, U.S., said democracy was a primary value in ethics. He felt that to enhance our democracy, all our social institutions should incorporate as much democracy as possible in their internal structure. From education to industry, democratic systems would improve functioning.
(15) John Rawls, Twentieth Century, U.S., said democracy should consider first the effect of any proposed action as it would impact the most vulnerable.
(16) Robert Nozick, Twentieth Century, U.S., to the contrary, argued for a state of individual rights with as few governmental limits as possible. Beyond military and police, he did not see value in government. He restated in the contemporary period, some of the ideas of Libertarianism.
Individuals should be able to purchase the goods and services they needed for their survival and happiness, and those individuals who could not purchase those things should do without. Regulation of commerce was an unnecessary impediment. The consumer should decide for themselves what to purchase; thus, he argued, competition would produce safe food, drugs, products, and industrial activities.
However, in the real, not the ideal world, only a fully informed consumer, with options in selection, and enough money, can purchase safe, quality products.
Long over-looked as impossible utopianism, Libertarianism has re-surfaced recently. Seeking a return to ideas of rugged individualism, libertarians want an end to government spending, even if it means denying their own interests in an economic safety net, or quality of products and environment, or stability of the mega-financial markets. Some, such as followers of Nietzsche, a German of the 1800's, claim individual freedom even when it causes harm others.
Some wish to freeze the United States in a political system of the 1700's, when the Constitution was written, to stretch over the technology, economy, and society that were simplistic by modern standards. The Constitution was written by quill on parchment by slave-owning, white, male landowners, and, with one exception, all Protestant.
Some claim the United States was founded by Christians as a Christian nation. In truth, religious freedom was proclaimed from Plymouth Rock to the founding of Rhode Island to Virginia to the First Amendment of the Constitution.
John Adams did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Washington and Jefferson did not believe in Divine Intervention. Washington was having an affair with the wife of a friend. Jefferson had (5?) children with a slave who was 14 when the relationship began and who was the half-sister of his deceased (white) wife. Benjamin Franklin frequented the brothels of Paris.
Some claim the Constitution must be interpreted as it would have been in an era when slavery was world-wide, women were possessions, only landowners could vote, and, in England, Jews and Catholics could not vote. Ironically, all the members of the current Supreme Court are Jewish or Catholic.
Based on the atheistic theories of Transcendentalism, and Nietzsche's atheistic, amoral elitism, Libertarianism has been embraced recently by some mainstream Christians and extreme Christians.
(17) Moderation is the notion that a balance can be maintained among the vulnerable, the working, and the economic elite.
With equal rights for all individuals, a government with some aid to the needy, and with effective regulation of commerce can allow, and at times enhance, the individual pursuit of happiness.
Both Liberals and Conservatives want a strong capitalist economy. Liberals tend to lean toward governmental programs to use a portion of government funds to benefit the poor, the sick, and the elderly. They are more likely to be suspicious of unregulated manufacturing and commerce. Conservatives lean toward more government protections and benefits for commerce.
(18) Summary: The history of Rome shows the downhill flow from republican democracy to unlimited tyranny. The history of Britain shows the rise of republican democracy, with a limited monarchy, flowing away from dictatorial landlords and kings.
The history of the United States shows a flow from a slavery-based, landowner citizenry in a republican democracy, to growing civil rights for all individuals. Political power has rocked back and forth between control by an economic elite, and control by reform movements.
Militarism has become more popular since World War II. Recently, economic protection of national commerce has given way to a global system of competition for products and wages. Global protection of the environment and labor standards is non-existent.
(19) Conclusion: Generally, the most productive and creative times have been during a republican democracy based on the highest levels of individual freedom, individual economic opportunity, and a high ratio of an educated electorate.
Protection for the environment, labor, the needy, safety, human rights, and commerce accompany and enable liberty for individual flourishing.
Humans are frail creatures, each of us vulnerable at some points in our lives, from infancy through sickness to dying. Some do not have friends or families who can soften the blow of hardship, or become caretakers. The government is a creation of the whole that within reason can send aid in an organized and fair way that no charity can parallel. No one charity can reach so many "causes." From unpopular diseases to natural disasters to rare disabilities to public hygiene, government can represent us all.
If the least government is the best, then should we all move to the Sudan?
If police and armies are all we want, then who picks up the garbage?
How does the role of government protect and encourage individual desire and achievement?
---These are some of the questions of contemporary contention.
First, let's spin through some of the ideas of the great thinkers of the past.
Then, spin down to the bottom for a summary and conclusion to answer the conflicts of today.
(Yes, it is longer than I expected, but the sections are numbered, so you can find and read your favorites.)
(1) Aristotle identified three forms of government, both in their good stages and in their bad stages. "Democracy" means rule by the people, but at its worst is rule by a mob. "Oligarchy" means rule by the best, but at its worst is rule by a small group of dictators. "Monarchy" is rule by one, which can be a wise individual, or a terrible tyrant.
Further, he said there was a cycle among the three of them. Governments flow from one to the next, probably starting off in the good stage, then degenerating into the negative, until it was overthrown by the next form of government; and so on through all three. Democracy to mob, defeated (militarily?) by oligarchy that becomes a group of competing dictators, until one dictator emerges, who, once comfortable with power, might become a skillful leader.
Athens was ruled by several styles of government in a short period, from the uncle of Plato, who was an oligarch, to Socrates, who was given the death penalty by a democracy that Plato considered a mob, on through the tyranny of Alexander the Great, who ruled Athens at the time of Aristotle. As a child Alexander had been tutored by Aristotle. Rather than becoming a Philosopher-King, Alexander became a tyrant. Yet, he carried the philosophy, language, and culture of ancient Greece across much of the Middle East.
Rome, on the other hand, was a democracy for 500 years, ruled by an elected Senate, until their military campaigns across the Mediterranean. Over the next 500 years of their 1000 years, their conquests led to more and more treasure and slaves being sent back to Rome. The slaves were bought by the wealthy. The small farmers could not compete with the slave labor farms and found themselves going out of business. They went to Rome to find work. The only work was to join the military and continue the conquests. More treasure and slaves were sent back to Rome. More small farmers failed.
The wealthy generals, farmers, and bankers became more and more wealthy. The ruling Senators were these wealthy men. An oligarchy emerged, and then Julius Caesar defeated them to became the dictator. Julius and his nephew Augustus, who followed him, and was Caesar at the time of the birth of Jesus, brought stability to Rome, but at a cost of a line of rulers of brutality and capriciousness. (The word "capricious" meaning random or without forethought, comes from the name of the Island of Capri, where the Caesars spent their summers.)
The democracy was long disappeared.
(2) Machiavelli, from the 1500's in Italy, is said to have favored a cunning, amoral tyrant. However, reading more of his works than just his famous one, The Prince, shows that he favored a republic. Nevertheless, his name is still in use to describe a tyrant who maintains power at all costs.
(3) The history of the British Isles shows waves of conquests by Anglos, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, each bringing their own law. William the Conqueror, beginning in 1066, spread the reign of Norman kings over local, titled rulers who maintained their own small armies. The Norman kings centralized more and more power. Henry II solidified control and established a court system across his territory. His son, King Richard the Lionhearted, along with the majority of the king's army, departed the country on an expedition to the Crusades. Left behind, his brother, Prince John, had little power to resist the claims by the titled landowners to sign the Magna Charta, in the 1200's, and have his power limited by the House of Lords.
A dictatorship became an oligarchy.
House of Commons, elected commoners who did not have hereditary titles, were the other side of Parliament. Under Prime Minister Oliver Cromwell, the House of Commons beheaded King Charles I. This was followed by a Civil War over how much power the Parliament or the king would have. After one king was returned to power and was then beheaded by Parliament, the following king, at the Restoration of 1660, observed a careful balance with the legislature. For example, all demands for taxes first had to be presented to, and passed by, the House of Commons.
An oligarchy became a democracy. (Some people make a careful distinction between a democracy meaning direct rule by the people, also called participatory democracy, as compared to a republic, where the people elect representatives who rule.) The history of Britain then became continued civil reforms to grant the right to vote to more people, and to limit the rights of the nobles and lords. The government became more and more democratic.
(4) Thomas Hobbes, an Englishman of the 1600's, writing during the time of the English Civil War, said in a state of nature, man is a selfish animal at constant war with all other men. They live out lives which are "nasty, brutish, and short." Constant fear of violent death causes men to come together to create a state. They create a "social contract" to surrender their "natural rights" to an absolute sovereign. Hobbes challenged the doctrine of the divine right of kings by saying the power of the sovereign derived originally from the people. However, he said the monarch was absolute and not subject to acts of Parliament.
(5) Jean Jacques Rousseau, French, of the 1700's, called for a return to nature and was the father of Romanticism, saying men are by nature good, but in society are not. The "social contract" means government flows from the consent of the governed, who can withdraw their consent. In theory, "the advantages of a state of nature would be combined with the advantages of social life."
(6) John Locke, an Englishman of the 1600's, followed Hobbes in saying the state was formed by "social contract." However, unlike Hobbes, he believed in the natural goodness of humanity. He said the state should follow Natural Law, from which were derived "Human Rights," whereby all men were equal in having a right to "life, health, liberty, or possessions." An advocate of Democracy, Locke developed the idea of governmental checks and balances.
All four, Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke, agreed humans cannot live successfully without government.
(7) Thomas Jefferson, U.S., 1700's, altered the rights named by Locke from "life, liberty, and property," to those listed in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In doing so, he removed any reference in the document to a claimed right to property of slaves. He reached back to Aristotle's idea of the Good Life (the pursuit of happiness). Following Locke, Jefferson felt it was the role of government to allow individuals to reach their own happiness. Government should allow the individual to flourish.
The ideals of rule by consent of the governed under a social contract, the Constitution, with a balance of powers, became the foundation of the government of the United States. The Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution, specified rights remaining with the people.
(8) Rugged individualism was a U.S. theory based on the need to have lonely pioneers settle across a vast land, often living great distances from each other. Self-sufficient survival was often necessary. Farmers who grew everything they ate needed few government services, such as currency, roads, and the Post Office.
Thomas Jefferson envisioned an ideal government based on independent farmers, even though he owned nearly 200 slaves. As President, he made the Louisiana Purchase in 1802, doubling the size of the country, inviting westward expansion.
In the middle of the 1800's, New England essay writers and poets, such as Emerson and Thoreau, popularized Transcendentalism, a Romantic movement, with a get-back-to-nature theme, an optimistic view of self-reliant individualism, and with rejection of traditional authority.
Later becoming an excuse for anti-intellectualism, this Harvard-based system claimed personal intuition as the best source of knowledge. Mystics but not Christians, the Transcendentalists saw divinity in humanity and in nature. Their ideals of self-reliant individualism were absorbed by traditional U.S. Christians.
Rugged individualism has become a basis of U.S. libertarianism.
(9) Hegel, a German of the 1700's, claimed the state is the embodiment of the ultimate ideal, and the state's highest form, monarchy.
"In Hegelian dialectic, one concept (thesis) inevitably generates its opposite (antithesis), and the interaction of these leads to a new concept (synthesis). This in turn becomes the thesis of a new triad. This dynamic system flowed through history to reach absolute Idea." The Columbia Encyclopedia.
Hegelian dialectic, an Idealist theory of government based on a view of constant progress in history, became the theoretical basis of the two major forms of totalitarianism of the Twentieth Century, Nazism and Communism.
Totalitarianism differed from dictatorship in that in addition to control over the physical aspects of government and economy, it claimed control over thought and required adherence to a set of beliefs; a system comparable to rule by religious bodies.
(10) Fascism took Hegel's ideas in order to envision imperial expansion and conquest of neighboring nations. A panel of military and economic leaders would be the oligarchy that supported an absolute monarch.
(11) Nazism was based on fascism and incorporated ideas of national superiority of so great an extent that other peoples should be wiped out. Hitler not only wanted to kill all Jews, he wanted their money. He also wanted to wipe out Gypsies and gays. (However, when the Allies liberated the death camps, the gays were imprisoned to serve out their terms because they were considered "criminals.")
65 Million people, military and civilian, died in World War II.
(12) Marx envisioned history as dynamic, changing, using the three part dialectic which Hegel had described as being Ideal, as, instead, being material. He called this "dialectical materialism."
He predicted freeing labor (the working class) from oppressing owners of capitol (money and the means of production) (meaning, the ruling class). The working class would then rule the oppressors, the economic elite, (meaning, the ruling class), as a result of violent revolution, resulting in Communism, an utopia in which all were equal in rights, status, and material wealth.
Marx famously said "Religion is the opium of the people," and insisted all religion should wiped out. It kept the people asleep to the awareness of the oppression they were under, control by an international economic elite, the global ruling class.
(13) Socialism was a reform movement in England that sought greater voting rights and fairer taxes to ease the burden on the average man from the aristocracy who owned most of the land and the economic system.
Some people viewed Socialism as an intermediate stage that might be a part of an unstoppable historical march from monarchy to Communism. However, for Marx, Socialism was totally unacceptable because of its innate inequality. He rejected socialism because it was not idealistic. Only revolution would be able to bring about the complete change to Communism that he wanted.
(14) John Dewey, Twentieth Century, U.S., said democracy was a primary value in ethics. He felt that to enhance our democracy, all our social institutions should incorporate as much democracy as possible in their internal structure. From education to industry, democratic systems would improve functioning.
(15) John Rawls, Twentieth Century, U.S., said democracy should consider first the effect of any proposed action as it would impact the most vulnerable.
(16) Robert Nozick, Twentieth Century, U.S., to the contrary, argued for a state of individual rights with as few governmental limits as possible. Beyond military and police, he did not see value in government. He restated in the contemporary period, some of the ideas of Libertarianism.
Individuals should be able to purchase the goods and services they needed for their survival and happiness, and those individuals who could not purchase those things should do without. Regulation of commerce was an unnecessary impediment. The consumer should decide for themselves what to purchase; thus, he argued, competition would produce safe food, drugs, products, and industrial activities.
However, in the real, not the ideal world, only a fully informed consumer, with options in selection, and enough money, can purchase safe, quality products.
Long over-looked as impossible utopianism, Libertarianism has re-surfaced recently. Seeking a return to ideas of rugged individualism, libertarians want an end to government spending, even if it means denying their own interests in an economic safety net, or quality of products and environment, or stability of the mega-financial markets. Some, such as followers of Nietzsche, a German of the 1800's, claim individual freedom even when it causes harm others.
Some wish to freeze the United States in a political system of the 1700's, when the Constitution was written, to stretch over the technology, economy, and society that were simplistic by modern standards. The Constitution was written by quill on parchment by slave-owning, white, male landowners, and, with one exception, all Protestant.
Some claim the United States was founded by Christians as a Christian nation. In truth, religious freedom was proclaimed from Plymouth Rock to the founding of Rhode Island to Virginia to the First Amendment of the Constitution.
John Adams did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Washington and Jefferson did not believe in Divine Intervention. Washington was having an affair with the wife of a friend. Jefferson had (5?) children with a slave who was 14 when the relationship began and who was the half-sister of his deceased (white) wife. Benjamin Franklin frequented the brothels of Paris.
Some claim the Constitution must be interpreted as it would have been in an era when slavery was world-wide, women were possessions, only landowners could vote, and, in England, Jews and Catholics could not vote. Ironically, all the members of the current Supreme Court are Jewish or Catholic.
Based on the atheistic theories of Transcendentalism, and Nietzsche's atheistic, amoral elitism, Libertarianism has been embraced recently by some mainstream Christians and extreme Christians.
(17) Moderation is the notion that a balance can be maintained among the vulnerable, the working, and the economic elite.
With equal rights for all individuals, a government with some aid to the needy, and with effective regulation of commerce can allow, and at times enhance, the individual pursuit of happiness.
Both Liberals and Conservatives want a strong capitalist economy. Liberals tend to lean toward governmental programs to use a portion of government funds to benefit the poor, the sick, and the elderly. They are more likely to be suspicious of unregulated manufacturing and commerce. Conservatives lean toward more government protections and benefits for commerce.
(18) Summary: The history of Rome shows the downhill flow from republican democracy to unlimited tyranny. The history of Britain shows the rise of republican democracy, with a limited monarchy, flowing away from dictatorial landlords and kings.
The history of the United States shows a flow from a slavery-based, landowner citizenry in a republican democracy, to growing civil rights for all individuals. Political power has rocked back and forth between control by an economic elite, and control by reform movements.
Militarism has become more popular since World War II. Recently, economic protection of national commerce has given way to a global system of competition for products and wages. Global protection of the environment and labor standards is non-existent.
(19) Conclusion: Generally, the most productive and creative times have been during a republican democracy based on the highest levels of individual freedom, individual economic opportunity, and a high ratio of an educated electorate.
Protection for the environment, labor, the needy, safety, human rights, and commerce accompany and enable liberty for individual flourishing.
Humans are frail creatures, each of us vulnerable at some points in our lives, from infancy through sickness to dying. Some do not have friends or families who can soften the blow of hardship, or become caretakers. The government is a creation of the whole that within reason can send aid in an organized and fair way that no charity can parallel. No one charity can reach so many "causes." From unpopular diseases to natural disasters to rare disabilities to public hygiene, government can represent us all.
8 - Aesthetics - What is Art?
Aesthetics: What is art? What is Beauty?
What a pleasant thing to discuss. We all like aesthetics, even if we disagree about what we like, and why.
The other day, my car mechanic used the word aesthetics, in reference to my car, so I decided the term is in common usage. Here is a chronological outline of thought about the topic:
1 - Classical theory of Aesthetics begins with the writing of ancient Greek Aristotle. He had plenty to say and defined art as needing:
a - significant subject matter;
b- due proportion;
c - specific limitations, such as in the tragedy in drama, where plot, character, time, rhetoric, theatrics, all have contributions that he carefully described; finally,
d - art should be an improvement on nature. (The statue should look better than the model.)
Tragedy required "hubris," humans trying to act like gods; today we might call it unconscious vanity. Even though action was fated, hubris, an inherent character defect caused great loss.
Comedy was the discharge, or cleansing, of the emotion of pity.
Proportion was particularly important to the ancient Greeks who felt it was essential to beauty. They were the first in the Western world to use proportion in sculpture, particularly of the human figure, and in representational art. Before them, the ancient Egyptians, for example, presented art in flat relief, more as symbol than as representation.
Further, the Greeks used mathematics to create a system of proportion for their architecture, for example. The length and breath of a room or a building was in a set ratio.
2- The Romantic theory says that "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder." Thus, anything can be art or beautiful if the perceiver says it is so. In the mid-1800's, Beethoven in music, and Turner in painting, bridged the gap from Classical to Romantic, from strict form to a bold expression of feeling. The ability to communicate emotion was the goal.
Tragedy was no longer restricted to drama but could be in any art form which showed the tension of human striving that could lead to a higher realm of being or could devastatingly fail. Ultimate meaning could be gained or lost.
3- The Formal theory of art states that painting, for example, is good if it has pleasing composition, or form. Balance of the structural elements is essential. Art does not have to be representational of nature but can instead express emotion.
4 - The Modern theory says that art is but a frame, a perspective on ordinary life. It directs our attention in a new way to what we may have been aware of many times before. For example, a photograph might capture a slant of light on a stair step that hints at the unseen staircase of which it is a part.
The invention of the camera became a challenge to painters, who no longer needed to represent or document reality. New styles, such as Impressionism, showed light itself as the subject. The figure is revealed as a series of brushstrokes taking on the color of each flicker of light, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle.
5 - In the Twentieth Century artists, such as Picasso, looked to non-Western art for inspiration. Folk art and other "naive," untrained, expressions were studied. "Fine" art, which was described as that which had no purpose other than being art, was no longer necessarily "better" than "decorative" art, which could be affixed to everyday items and uses. Also, art could take more than one perspective at a time, such as in Cubism, in which Picasso showed a figure or a face from several sides at once.
Writers, such as William Faulkner or Gertrude Stein, attempted to show dialect, rather than lofty language. Ernest Hemingway sought simplicity, using nouns and verbs, but few adjectives or adverbs; again, avoiding lofty language. John Steinbeck and Arthur Miller also depicted "common" people. These writers all used the language of everyday to express bold or even tragic themes. From the ancients to Shakespeare, tragedy had been limited to royalty or high status, but no more.
Even though the settings, people, or language might have been everyday, the strivings were not.
6 - Post-modern theories tend to look to the fragments of structure that are art in themselves, even if they do not compose a "whole." The minimal units of art can be recombined to give a fresh perspective, even if they have no function or "meaning." Symmetry, for example, which was so important to the ancients and to classical theory, is to be avoided.
Authors no longer seek expression of the self but of elements of the self. There is no tension. Tragedy is impossible because there is no ultimate meaning to be gained or lost.
7 - Anti-aesthetics have also come into favor, in which the conscious avoidance of classical theory is the guiding principle. Not that ugliness is the goal, but rather a conspicuous rejection of convention. Self-awareness is one of the few remaining elements.
8 - Finally, there are those who in all seriousness claim that whatever they say is art, is art. Everything is art: Nothing is art; both statements are equally true, they say. Then, undefined, random individual opinion and popularity are that which determine what is art.
9 - Nevertheless, if anything is art, without regard to perspective, content, execution, form, or emotion; if art is no longer in some way separate from the ordinary, then it is no longer extraordinary. With nothing to communicate, art is no longer expression.
Sadly, without art, there can be no beauty.
What a pleasant thing to discuss. We all like aesthetics, even if we disagree about what we like, and why.
The other day, my car mechanic used the word aesthetics, in reference to my car, so I decided the term is in common usage. Here is a chronological outline of thought about the topic:
1 - Classical theory of Aesthetics begins with the writing of ancient Greek Aristotle. He had plenty to say and defined art as needing:
a - significant subject matter;
b- due proportion;
c - specific limitations, such as in the tragedy in drama, where plot, character, time, rhetoric, theatrics, all have contributions that he carefully described; finally,
d - art should be an improvement on nature. (The statue should look better than the model.)
Tragedy required "hubris," humans trying to act like gods; today we might call it unconscious vanity. Even though action was fated, hubris, an inherent character defect caused great loss.
Comedy was the discharge, or cleansing, of the emotion of pity.
Proportion was particularly important to the ancient Greeks who felt it was essential to beauty. They were the first in the Western world to use proportion in sculpture, particularly of the human figure, and in representational art. Before them, the ancient Egyptians, for example, presented art in flat relief, more as symbol than as representation.
Further, the Greeks used mathematics to create a system of proportion for their architecture, for example. The length and breath of a room or a building was in a set ratio.
2- The Romantic theory says that "Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder." Thus, anything can be art or beautiful if the perceiver says it is so. In the mid-1800's, Beethoven in music, and Turner in painting, bridged the gap from Classical to Romantic, from strict form to a bold expression of feeling. The ability to communicate emotion was the goal.
Tragedy was no longer restricted to drama but could be in any art form which showed the tension of human striving that could lead to a higher realm of being or could devastatingly fail. Ultimate meaning could be gained or lost.
3- The Formal theory of art states that painting, for example, is good if it has pleasing composition, or form. Balance of the structural elements is essential. Art does not have to be representational of nature but can instead express emotion.
4 - The Modern theory says that art is but a frame, a perspective on ordinary life. It directs our attention in a new way to what we may have been aware of many times before. For example, a photograph might capture a slant of light on a stair step that hints at the unseen staircase of which it is a part.
The invention of the camera became a challenge to painters, who no longer needed to represent or document reality. New styles, such as Impressionism, showed light itself as the subject. The figure is revealed as a series of brushstrokes taking on the color of each flicker of light, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle.
5 - In the Twentieth Century artists, such as Picasso, looked to non-Western art for inspiration. Folk art and other "naive," untrained, expressions were studied. "Fine" art, which was described as that which had no purpose other than being art, was no longer necessarily "better" than "decorative" art, which could be affixed to everyday items and uses. Also, art could take more than one perspective at a time, such as in Cubism, in which Picasso showed a figure or a face from several sides at once.
Writers, such as William Faulkner or Gertrude Stein, attempted to show dialect, rather than lofty language. Ernest Hemingway sought simplicity, using nouns and verbs, but few adjectives or adverbs; again, avoiding lofty language. John Steinbeck and Arthur Miller also depicted "common" people. These writers all used the language of everyday to express bold or even tragic themes. From the ancients to Shakespeare, tragedy had been limited to royalty or high status, but no more.
Even though the settings, people, or language might have been everyday, the strivings were not.
6 - Post-modern theories tend to look to the fragments of structure that are art in themselves, even if they do not compose a "whole." The minimal units of art can be recombined to give a fresh perspective, even if they have no function or "meaning." Symmetry, for example, which was so important to the ancients and to classical theory, is to be avoided.
Authors no longer seek expression of the self but of elements of the self. There is no tension. Tragedy is impossible because there is no ultimate meaning to be gained or lost.
7 - Anti-aesthetics have also come into favor, in which the conscious avoidance of classical theory is the guiding principle. Not that ugliness is the goal, but rather a conspicuous rejection of convention. Self-awareness is one of the few remaining elements.
8 - Finally, there are those who in all seriousness claim that whatever they say is art, is art. Everything is art: Nothing is art; both statements are equally true, they say. Then, undefined, random individual opinion and popularity are that which determine what is art.
9 - Nevertheless, if anything is art, without regard to perspective, content, execution, form, or emotion; if art is no longer in some way separate from the ordinary, then it is no longer extraordinary. With nothing to communicate, art is no longer expression.
Sadly, without art, there can be no beauty.
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