Notes on Meaning

In a sense, there's no such thing as a romantic relationship -- there is no such thing as a relationship. You have two people, their memories of each other, their behavioural dispositions, their environment, their social and legal contracts, etc. But it's not as if the relationship has reality in itself; this is merely a convenient way of speaking.

Well, the same is true, I'd suggest, of "meaning". It's not as if meanings exist -- this is merely a (very) convenient way of speaking. We seem to have an idea that words are containers that carry meaning; words travel from one brain to another and offload their cargo. But do words contain anything? Isn't the more realistic way of thinking to say that words are sounds and images -- physical things -- and they have physical effects that might or might not match my desires?

Is there non-physical "meaning" in addition to words? -- I am caused to produce the words, I produce them, they have effects on you -- is there anything more?

Do people have to have a single intention when they speak? Do they have to have a clear intention?

Judges will sometimes use the "intention" of parliament when interpreting a statute. But the whole thing is legal fiction: that law was drafted by many people, was voted on by many people, was worked through many committees. So, how could there be a single "intention"? It's not as if a parliament is a person.

But is a person a person? Don't people "contain multitudes" in the same way that parliaments do? Don't people have many and contradictory thoughts, and don't they change over time?

Do people have a meaning at all?

ANOTHER DILEMMA!?

Okay guys, let's give this one a try..

You have a wonderful daughter. She is 8 years old and has always been a happy outgoing child. But a while ago something terrible happened, she was raped. You are quite sure that the person who raped her is your neighbor. Your daughter is so traumatized she has stopped speaking, but she in other ways been able to convince you that he is the one.

Unfortunately not enough evidence can be found to convict him.You try to put your life back together. You move to another house and try to help your daughter in any way you can, but it is clear that the experience has ruined her life and that of your family.One evening you have taken your wife out to dinner at a restaurant when you spot your former neighbor at another table. He is eating alone and looks unhappy. You quickly finish eating and leave.

The next day you find out that your former neighbors wife has been murdered. Enough evidence to convict him of the murder is soon found, and at first you are very happy, finally his will get what he deserves.But then you remember that you saw him in the restaurant at the time of the murder. you know he did not murder his wife. Maybe he paid someone else to do it…

You remember that the police said that it had been made it look like a burglary, maybe it was…You sit down to think. If you keep quiet he will be convicted for the murder, and the real murderer will go free If you give him an alibi, he will go free, but you can’t be sure the real murderer will be found, and it is possible that the evil bastard paid someone to do it.

Using this information, what would you do?

Are you Moral?

Most people think of themselves as pretty decent types, maybe not saints, but they tell themselves they're willing to do the right thing most of the time. But if you examine how people actually behave in various situations, situations that put their moral characters to the test, we don’t actually measure up to our own-self assessments.

Social psychologists have long known that our evaluations of other people are suspect in certain ways. More recently, they've uncovered surprising and provocative results about the ways in which people evaluate their own moral characters. Start with a simple example about evaluating others. Suppose Alice sees Bob trip over a rock and fall. Alice might consider Bob to be clumsy or careless. But if Alice herself tripped over the same rock, she’d be more likely to blame the placement of the rock for her tripping. and not her own clumsiness.

In evaluating others, in other words, people are much more likely to focus on character, to the exclusion of situation, while in evaluating our own actions, we take full account of the effects of the situation. Social psychologists call this tendency to ignore the effects of the situation in evaluating others the fundamental attribution error. It’s also called actor-observer bias. That label highlights our tendency to make moral attributions in one way in our role as first person actor, and in a different way, in our role as third person observer.

What are your values and how do you ensure that they are applied in everyday life?

Revisting Utilitarianism

In earlier blog posts and comments I spoke rather highly of utilitarianism.  My good feelings about the theory were challenged recently when, in preparing for my paper, I ran across a moral dilemma challenging utilitarianism.  It goes something like this:

Imagine that an extremely wealthy person has willed that his fortune go to charity after he dies.  The money would be very beneficial for the well-being of humanity.  Therefore, for the utilitarian it is morally correct to murder the wealthy benefactor so that his money will go to charity immediately.  In applying the utilitarian calculus, the entire world is better off if his money goes to charity than if he continues to live.

Now, I can think of utilitarian arguments for not killing the wealthy person, but they are not entirely satisfying.  The first objection is that there would be social repercussions for a society that tolerates killing of this sort.  True, but that is just not satisfying as the only reason to refrain from killing him.  Isn't there something wrong with the idea, in itself, of murdering an innocent person?  Furthermore the scenario could be modified to bypass this objection—say, if the wealthy person lived in isolation in the wilderness.

Next, one might object that killing the wealthy person adds unnecessary pain, since the benefactor's money will still go to charity eventually if you do not kill him.  Therefore, in applying the utilitarian calculus, total happiness would actually be slightly lower.  But again, the scenario can be tweaked to get around this objection.  For example,  we could say that the wealthy person is in only his 30s.  Still, the good consequences of his money going to charity would create more general well-being than if he were to live on several decades before giving away his money.

Without a doubt, this seems to me like a major failing of utilitarianism.  However, this brings me to my next point.  My revulsion at utilitarianism's prescribed action in this scenario is an intuitive response rather than a reasoned response.  Based on the consequences alone, killing seems to be ethically correct in this scenario.  But, of course, I think pretty much everyone (including myself) would agree that killing is not ethically correct in this scenario.  Why is this?  I don't see how anything besides consequences can be taken into account in evaluating moral behavior.  Kant says that humans should behave according to duty to moral laws, but those laws are determined using the categorical imperative.  How can a person decide what to will or not to will as a universal law without considering consequences?  And what else, besides consequences, factors in to those decisions?  I can't think of anything.

Change We Can Believe In

Our presidential politics have been dominated by white males until November 2008 when Barack Obama won the presidential election. Obama’s campaign slogan was “Change We Can Believe In.” This reminded me about our discussion on race theory. What does Obama mean by the term change? I am wondering if the public viewed change in a sense of governing as a Democrat rather than a Republican or change, in a sense of moving away from the predominantly white male ideals that have been the defining element of our political climate for many years.

In a way, it could be argued that to advocate for the “Change We Can Believe In” meant that Obama was trying to change the government’s focus on White ideals. The necessity for preserving ideal whiteness needed to be surpassed in order for Obama to become president and to introduce new ideals into the system.

As we said about Descartes’ questions, if Descartes had not himself been white then his questions would have been different because of his experiences. So, the subject is formed by different questions. Likewise, as a black man in politics, Obama probably had different perspectives to improve this country. This difference is grounded in Obama’s background and the culture that he was exposed to, which was partially white and black.

The claim that many people made about Obama was that he was not “really black” because of his background experience. The White experience is associated with wealth and prestigious education. From the beginning of his education, Obama was enrolled in a highly acclaimed Punahou Academy. Obama studied at Occidental College and then transferred to Columbia University in New York. Later, Obama joined Harvard Law School after he returned from his trip to Kenya. His experience, though as a half black man because of his genealogy, has been primarily a stereotypical “white” experience. So when he asks for the people to vote for him because he is the “change they can believe in” I wonder if he himself meant a change from the racial ideals that have governed this country or were his ideals to same as the stereotypical white experience so he meant something else by the term “change”?

I voted for Obama in 2008 and thought that we took a huge step forward as we did not let race define our politics- we decided on the basis of the candidate himself. I want to hear what you all think about the 2008 election, especially because Obama is up for reelection. One, did we move forward by defying the racial barriers of white males being the leaders of our country when Obama was elected or was it just another presidential candidate taking office because Obama actually had a “white” childhood? Two, what do you think Obama meant by the term “change” in his campaign slogan, “Change We Can Believe In”?


Obama’s biography:
http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369

One of Obama's campaign posters from 2008: http://img.discountpostersale.com/posters/MOV406965/1/Barack-Obama---Change-We-Can-Believe-In.jpg

A Final Answer to the Trolley Problem

After a semester of studying ethics and many different moral codes and schools of thought, it was hard to decide upon a solution to answer the trolley problem. The two ideologies that struck me as the most applicable to this problem were Utilitarianism and Kant's Categorical Imperative. In this trolley, there is one child on board who is going down the track that will end and crash and he will die, but at the station, you can pull the lever where it will redirect the trolley onto a track where there are three kids playing, who will be run over by the trolley. You have to make a choice about it, as not pulling the lever is the same as choosing to end the life of the one child on board.

The Utilitarian Calculus states that one should act in such a way that minimizes pain and increases pleasure for the most amount of people. This means that in the trolley problem, one should let the train run its course to end the life of the one child inside the trolley rather than the multiple children playing on the track farther down if the trolley were to switch directions. By not pulling the lever, only one child would perish, which would lead to less pain for a greater number of people, whereas pulling the lever would cause more pain for a greater number of people.

A Kantian theorist would say that one should pull the lever in way that could be willed as a universal maxim for all people in the same situation. In this case, one would probably also let the train continue, but for different reasons. I find this problematic, however, as the circumstances could change but the maxim would not. For instance, what if the one child on the train was a child of an important diplomat or politician, or even your own child? In this case you would like to pull the lever and save the one person, but is this really moral? It seems like changing circumstances could change the maxim and cause it to be somewhat fluctuating in meaning and not universal.

I would choose the Utilitarian method for the trolley problem. Which moral code would you choose, and why?

NOTE: Your choice does not have to be between Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics, those are just the two I choose as they were the most relevant to my personal beliefs on the issue.

In Response to Florian

I know that it is my week to blog and not to comment but after reading Flo's post "Is it Philosophy" I was inspired, so to speak.

I do not think that the purpose of philosophy is the study of wisdom. I think that philosophy is, rather, a rational investigation of certain types of knowledge or being. Its aim is to find the truth in certain claims. With that being said, I think that it IS the case that we can consider feminist philosophy or critical race theories to actually be what we formerly call philosophy. For women to inject themselves into the discipline, they are effectively asserting that there is some truth to be gained from the fact that women, also, have a voice which has been left out of the past analysis in late philosophical theories. Likewise, in critical race theory, these theorists are highlighting the investigation of the "being" of nonwhite humans. Since philosophy is a type of rational questioning of what it means for things/people to "be" a certain way, I think that we could also say that it is very important to the concept of philosophy, itself, to not leave out the questions that actually derive its existence.

Furthermore, to leave out the fact that things like race and feminism make an important contribution to the theory, means that philosophers are further dominating the field by exercising their (captial "W") Whiteness. If it were the case that we just left philosophy the way that it is without changing anything, then wouldn't we also, still be moving further away from the idea that philosophy can exhibit a type of universality. If we can just be honest with ourselves for a minute, we will recognize how most of the forerunners of philosophy speak from the same perspective and prescribe to others their dominant perspective, not taking care to involve other perspectives that make up a substantial part of the population, yet who are not recognized because they are not viewed as "important."

In my philosophy of race class with Dr. J last semester we discussed how it was very easy for most students to say that we're in a post-racism society and make naive claims such as that. The reality of the matter is, however, that we are not in a post racism society and just the fact that bringing up the topic of racism promotes such controversial dialogue indicates that there are still some questions to be answered about just the very meaning of what it means to be racist. If this is the case, then don't you think that it is kind of the responsibility of philosophers to play a part in answering ethical questions that we, ourselves, seem to be stumped by like, "What is racism?" or "How do we know whether there is such a thing as a non-racist society?" This is why the contributions of feminist theorists and critical race theorists are necessary.


Thanks for the inspiration Flo!! lol

Is it Philosophy?

In today‘s discussion in class, we touched a very interesting debate about what Philosophy actually is. In fact, as Dr. J pointed out quite clear, the agents who are engaged in Philosophy have changed a lot during the last couple of decades. Of course, only compared to the centuries before. So, the question came up, whether it can be considered Philosophy, if we talk about topics like race and gender of human beings.

In my opinion, it cannot be called Philosophy but still is very closely tied to it. Why is that the case? The “science” of Philosophy is defined as the “love of wisdom”. What is wisdom? From my point of view, wisdom should consider everything, not only race and gender and those sorts of aspects that define a part of human beings but will never be able to really tell, what and who a human being is. Therefore, it is necessary that we consider gender and race as one aspect of human beings, but we ought not assess these aspects too much.

This statement is supported by a very interesting clip that can be watched here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yMLZO-sObzQ

For those of you, who don‘t have time to watch it, it shows a young man who was raised by two women, speaking in the Iowa House of Representatives. He clearly points out that he is in fact no different from other children that were raised in, what we tend to call “normal” families.

Another point that came to my mind during that discussion today was the question, if humans are really capable of making universal statements. Even in Philosophy, can we ever reach the point at which we can say that the statement or the assumption X is really true for everybody? Clearly, Philosophy as we know it can be considered a western “invention”. So, how could it be the case that people from that cultural background make statements that are universal true or make assumptions that include everybody on this planet. Isn‘t that always just something like a personal assumption from a very subjective point of view?

So, all in all, critical race theory and the feminist approaches are not Philosophy - at least in my point of view. This sounds pretty negative, but it would like to make sure that I don‘t want to give any value - either good nor bad - to the word “Philosophy”. So, by saying “this is not Philosophy” it is not said that it is a bad approach. All these theories have very interesting claims that can help Philosophy, but are themselves no Philosophy.