Saturday, January 31, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Why Rawls? and 138B
So I read about half of the actual Rawls text (still going to read the rest before class), and I don't understand why we're reading it for this class. We're studying communication ethics. I understand the readings on that. I understand the readings on ethics in general. Rawls specifically says that he's restricting attention to political justice, and not trying to write about ethics ("morality") in general. So: Why Rawls?
Here's Colour Record No. 138, Side B:
Here's Colour Record No. 138, Side B:
Monday, January 26, 2015
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Rawls and 137B
Continuing my pattern of reading backwards :) I read not the Rawls text, but rather the text about Rawls
And I wanted to point out the following:
1. The cake-cutting example does not illustrate the veil of ignorance! Of course the person cuts equal pieces, but that is not because the person doesn't know which piece will be left at the end, but rather because the person is certain that the smallest piece will be left at the end, i.e. the person isn't working (cutting cake) in a condition of ignorance, but rather in a condition of perfect knowledge
2. For the above reason, the cake-cutting example and the veil of ignorance cannot really be criticized simultaneously. Anything you say will be criticism of one and support for the other, because they are exact opposites. It's cute :)
3. It's true (and it's clear) that the cake-cutting example will necessary result in equal pieces. But is having equal pieces even a good idea to begin with? Please take a look at this (here's the same story in another place)
And here's Colour Record No. 137, Side B:
And I wanted to point out the following:
1. The cake-cutting example does not illustrate the veil of ignorance! Of course the person cuts equal pieces, but that is not because the person doesn't know which piece will be left at the end, but rather because the person is certain that the smallest piece will be left at the end, i.e. the person isn't working (cutting cake) in a condition of ignorance, but rather in a condition of perfect knowledge
2. For the above reason, the cake-cutting example and the veil of ignorance cannot really be criticized simultaneously. Anything you say will be criticism of one and support for the other, because they are exact opposites. It's cute :)
3. It's true (and it's clear) that the cake-cutting example will necessary result in equal pieces. But is having equal pieces even a good idea to begin with? Please take a look at this (here's the same story in another place)
And here's Colour Record No. 137, Side B:
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
Kant and 136B
Kant's prose, in the original, is actually lucid, fluid, and eloquent. We once read it in a German class just for his mastery of language, when we (or, at least, I) had genuine Desinteresse in what he actually said or meant.
And, in translation, it turns into a verbal wall on which I could break my dense head if I persisted long enough with the effort :(
And there's no point wondering whether the translators are sadists (writing badly on purpose) or idiots (lacking the ability to read German and/or write English). It's just that this is what happens when you want a translation to be (more) accurate. Rest assured that perfectly readable English would also look like gibberish if translated into German by someone concerned with "accuracy".
That said, the reading was about the categorical imperative. I already read the John Stuart Mill text, where it's pointed out that the categorical imperative can actually be used in very few situations. I'll go ahead and conjecture a possible reason why that is so. In many situations, the following two things are unclear:
(a) whether it is possible to determine by a priori reasoning the consequences of something becoming a universal law, and
(b) even if that is actually possible, whether the actor in the situation has the ability to make that determination (Kant assumes the faculty of reason to be objective and universal, but that assumptions requires justification).
Other than that, Kant points out that utilitarianism can only be applied a posteriori after experience, etc. And here's Colour Record No. 136, Side B:
And, in translation, it turns into a verbal wall on which I could break my dense head if I persisted long enough with the effort :(
And there's no point wondering whether the translators are sadists (writing badly on purpose) or idiots (lacking the ability to read German and/or write English). It's just that this is what happens when you want a translation to be (more) accurate. Rest assured that perfectly readable English would also look like gibberish if translated into German by someone concerned with "accuracy".
That said, the reading was about the categorical imperative. I already read the John Stuart Mill text, where it's pointed out that the categorical imperative can actually be used in very few situations. I'll go ahead and conjecture a possible reason why that is so. In many situations, the following two things are unclear:
(a) whether it is possible to determine by a priori reasoning the consequences of something becoming a universal law, and
(b) even if that is actually possible, whether the actor in the situation has the ability to make that determination (Kant assumes the faculty of reason to be objective and universal, but that assumptions requires justification).
Other than that, Kant points out that utilitarianism can only be applied a posteriori after experience, etc. And here's Colour Record No. 136, Side B:
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
A little more on "pleasure or pain" :) and 135B
Because of Bentham's book of "pleasure or pain", also because it's snowing again, this poem:
Morning At Last: There in the Snow
By Philip Larkin
Morning at last: there in the snow
Your small blunt footprints come and go.
Night has left no more to show,
Not the candle, the half-drunk wine,
Or touching joy; only this sign
Of your life walking into mine.
But when they vanish with the rain
What morning woke to will remain
Whether as happiness or pain.
And here's Colour Record No. 135, Side B:
Morning At Last: There in the Snow
By Philip Larkin
Morning at last: there in the snow
Your small blunt footprints come and go.
Night has left no more to show,
Not the candle, the half-drunk wine,
Or touching joy; only this sign
Of your life walking into mine.
But when they vanish with the rain
What morning woke to will remain
Whether as happiness or pain.
And here's Colour Record No. 135, Side B:
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Bentham and 135A
This reading was chapters I, IV, and V of Jeremy Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781). I need 200 words.
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I can only think that this particular reading was intended as a passing look at a historical curiosity. In an older version of what John Stuart Mill would later write, Bentham makes the cute mistake of thinking without stopping to think: He thinks that the "interest of the community" is "the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it" (chapter I, final sentence of paragraph IV).
This blog is not a criticism of Bentham! That assumption, even though it is false (and, more importantly, made in this text by an author who makes no attempt at justifying it), was typical of Bentham's times. For example, Adam Smith also made, in essence, the same false assumption in his work on economics.
But now it's 2015, and the details of that particular matter have been explained (even at a popular level, for example in the movie A Beautiful Mind).
Bentham repeats the same mistake in chapter IV, paragraph V, section 6; he has a quaint list of pains and pleasures in chapter V. As long as we are looking at it, it might be possible to use the list toward a reconstruction of the the mind of Mr. Bentham, if anyone's interested :)
_________________________________________________________________________________
That's 204 words :) Here's Colour Record No. 135, Side A:
_________________________________________________________________________________
I can only think that this particular reading was intended as a passing look at a historical curiosity. In an older version of what John Stuart Mill would later write, Bentham makes the cute mistake of thinking without stopping to think: He thinks that the "interest of the community" is "the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it" (chapter I, final sentence of paragraph IV).
This blog is not a criticism of Bentham! That assumption, even though it is false (and, more importantly, made in this text by an author who makes no attempt at justifying it), was typical of Bentham's times. For example, Adam Smith also made, in essence, the same false assumption in his work on economics.
But now it's 2015, and the details of that particular matter have been explained (even at a popular level, for example in the movie A Beautiful Mind).
Bentham repeats the same mistake in chapter IV, paragraph V, section 6; he has a quaint list of pains and pleasures in chapter V. As long as we are looking at it, it might be possible to use the list toward a reconstruction of the the mind of Mr. Bentham, if anyone's interested :)
_________________________________________________________________________________
That's 204 words :) Here's Colour Record No. 135, Side A:
Monday, January 19, 2015
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
John Stuart Mill and 133B
Yesterday in class we tried to tell Dr. Borton that it's unethical to assign homework, but he didn't buy it :( That's why I need to take Principles of Persuasion before I take too many more other classes :(
And that's also why we have three more texts to read next week, and so I got started by reading one of them yesterday, and it's the first chapter and the first two sections of the second chapter from John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. And---
_________________________________________________________________________________
I find myself in an unfamiliar place, namely, in a place where I actually feel grateful for homework, because this particular text is genuinely brilliant.
That said, here's the nit I'll pick in this text:
A. The text already admits the possibility that the ranking of pleasures can be subjective (it admits this in the indented lines in the first column of p. 6, where it says "... or almost all people ...", and again at the end of p. 7, where it says "... or, if they differ among themselves, the judgement of the majority among them.").
a. And I should like to add that the text offers no reason why this should be a mere possibility. For all we can tell from the text, it might very well be a certainty that such a ranking would be subjective.
B. And, in the event that that ranking of pleasures does indeed turn out to be subjective---that "those who are qualified by knowledge of both (pleasures)" (p. 7) do happen to "differ among themselves"---in that event, there is surely no logical reason to defer to "the judgement of the majority among them". An opinion does not become right just because it happens to be held by a majority. Given that I'm speaking to John Stuart Mill, I'm sure I don't need to further belabor this particular point :) because he had already discussed "tyranny of the majority" in On Liberty (pub. 1859) (Utilitarianism was published in 1863).
C. Next, given the two points that have already been made above, there's no logical reason to defer to even a unanimous judgement of "those who are qualified": By A. above, the contrary judgement, too, was at least possible, and therefore, by B. above, the contrary judgement cannot be ruled out just because of the opinions of "those who are qualified". A unanimous opinion is merely a special case of a majority opinion.
D. Having made note of that stalemate, I ask why on earth I (or even we) even need to determine such a ranking in the first place. If this were, for example, a matter of the election of a government, then any decision, even a wrong decision, would have been preferable to having no decision (since having no decision in the election of a government would result in the civic life of a country first coming to a standstill and finally descending into chaos). But this is not. This is a matter in which it might very well be possible that we can all muddle through without ever becoming quite sure which of two contending pleasures is, in a universal sense, more or less desirable than the other, and this is a matter in which we can all very well afford to leave open the possibility that the answer to that question might be different for different people.
E. But this much I am prepared to believe: Each being, starting with the pig on p. 5 and going up to the best philosopher Mr. Mill might care to name, may have a personal ranking of pleasures, whether said being be conscious of it or not (here I am imagining the philosopher to be, I hope, making conscious decisions, and I am imagining the pig to be perhaps following its instincts without being conscious about it).
e. I would even go so far as to conjecture that each being's personal ranking of pleasures might be just as unique as its DNA.
_________________________________________________________________________________
There. The second blog post needed to be at least 500 words, and the above is 582 words. And here's Colour Record No. 133, Side B:
And that's also why we have three more texts to read next week, and so I got started by reading one of them yesterday, and it's the first chapter and the first two sections of the second chapter from John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. And---
_________________________________________________________________________________
I find myself in an unfamiliar place, namely, in a place where I actually feel grateful for homework, because this particular text is genuinely brilliant.
That said, here's the nit I'll pick in this text:
A. The text already admits the possibility that the ranking of pleasures can be subjective (it admits this in the indented lines in the first column of p. 6, where it says "... or almost all people ...", and again at the end of p. 7, where it says "... or, if they differ among themselves, the judgement of the majority among them.").
a. And I should like to add that the text offers no reason why this should be a mere possibility. For all we can tell from the text, it might very well be a certainty that such a ranking would be subjective.
B. And, in the event that that ranking of pleasures does indeed turn out to be subjective---that "those who are qualified by knowledge of both (pleasures)" (p. 7) do happen to "differ among themselves"---in that event, there is surely no logical reason to defer to "the judgement of the majority among them". An opinion does not become right just because it happens to be held by a majority. Given that I'm speaking to John Stuart Mill, I'm sure I don't need to further belabor this particular point :) because he had already discussed "tyranny of the majority" in On Liberty (pub. 1859) (Utilitarianism was published in 1863).
C. Next, given the two points that have already been made above, there's no logical reason to defer to even a unanimous judgement of "those who are qualified": By A. above, the contrary judgement, too, was at least possible, and therefore, by B. above, the contrary judgement cannot be ruled out just because of the opinions of "those who are qualified". A unanimous opinion is merely a special case of a majority opinion.
D. Having made note of that stalemate, I ask why on earth I (or even we) even need to determine such a ranking in the first place. If this were, for example, a matter of the election of a government, then any decision, even a wrong decision, would have been preferable to having no decision (since having no decision in the election of a government would result in the civic life of a country first coming to a standstill and finally descending into chaos). But this is not. This is a matter in which it might very well be possible that we can all muddle through without ever becoming quite sure which of two contending pleasures is, in a universal sense, more or less desirable than the other, and this is a matter in which we can all very well afford to leave open the possibility that the answer to that question might be different for different people.
E. But this much I am prepared to believe: Each being, starting with the pig on p. 5 and going up to the best philosopher Mr. Mill might care to name, may have a personal ranking of pleasures, whether said being be conscious of it or not (here I am imagining the philosopher to be, I hope, making conscious decisions, and I am imagining the pig to be perhaps following its instincts without being conscious about it).
e. I would even go so far as to conjecture that each being's personal ranking of pleasures might be just as unique as its DNA.
_________________________________________________________________________________
There. The second blog post needed to be at least 500 words, and the above is 582 words. And here's Colour Record No. 133, Side B:
Friday, January 16, 2015
Wrong book? and 133A
Correction: The syllabus did say Nicomachean Ethics, which is why I wrote that when I posted the disclaimer on Wednesday night, but the reading turned out to be from Ars Rhetorica instead. The "Advertisement", the introduction, and the first six chapters of this. What I said (about my post being only a sixth derivative of what Aristotle might actually have meant) still applies, of course.
And a new disclaimer: If you open that link to the reading and count, that was ninety-one pages, and I only need to post 200 words on it, so obviously I don't need to write everything I read, or even about everything I read. Accordingly, I'll take the rapid writing workshop approach of pointing out the one part I thought was strongest and the one part I thought was weakest.
With those two things said, here are my 200 words:
_________________________________________________________________________________
The final paragraph of Chapter III, after the opening sentence of that paragraph, establishes the need for (or, at least, the desirability of) valuations: "... it is evident that it is requisite to have propositions ...", and "... such for instance as what is a greater or less good, an unjust, or a just action; and in a similar manner in other things."
I aristotally agree with this. I'd only have added a cautionary comment that there's no reason to expect/suspect that such valuations might be either objective or universal, but the text takes care of that (albeit implicitly) in the opening paragraph of Chapter V, where it prefaces its definition of felicity by saying, "... for the sake of an example, we shall assume what felicity is ..." (p. 26), i.e. (a) the text is making an assumption here, and (b) the specific assumption that it is making is merely intended as an example (it would have been possible to make a different assumption instead).
That's the part I thought was strongest.
The part I thought was weakest was the third paragraph of Chapter VI et seq., where the text assumes that lack of evil equals good, which assumption appears to be needlessly simplistic (to me). I suspect you'd get a richer, more complex, and more interesting theory if you allow valuations whose values have no linear ordering.
_________________________________________________________________________________
There. 229 words. And here's Colour Record No. 133, Side A:
And a new disclaimer: If you open that link to the reading and count, that was ninety-one pages, and I only need to post 200 words on it, so obviously I don't need to write everything I read, or even about everything I read. Accordingly, I'll take the rapid writing workshop approach of pointing out the one part I thought was strongest and the one part I thought was weakest.
With those two things said, here are my 200 words:
_________________________________________________________________________________
The final paragraph of Chapter III, after the opening sentence of that paragraph, establishes the need for (or, at least, the desirability of) valuations: "... it is evident that it is requisite to have propositions ...", and "... such for instance as what is a greater or less good, an unjust, or a just action; and in a similar manner in other things."
I aristotally agree with this. I'd only have added a cautionary comment that there's no reason to expect/suspect that such valuations might be either objective or universal, but the text takes care of that (albeit implicitly) in the opening paragraph of Chapter V, where it prefaces its definition of felicity by saying, "... for the sake of an example, we shall assume what felicity is ..." (p. 26), i.e. (a) the text is making an assumption here, and (b) the specific assumption that it is making is merely intended as an example (it would have been possible to make a different assumption instead).
That's the part I thought was strongest.
The part I thought was weakest was the third paragraph of Chapter VI et seq., where the text assumes that lack of evil equals good, which assumption appears to be needlessly simplistic (to me). I suspect you'd get a richer, more complex, and more interesting theory if you allow valuations whose values have no linear ordering.
_________________________________________________________________________________
There. 229 words. And here's Colour Record No. 133, Side A:
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Pre-Aristotelian
So this semester I again have a class with a graded blog, so I'll be posting stuff for that grade. The good news is that this time the grade only involves about one post a week :) the bad news is that there are minimum word counts :( For the first time in the history of this blog :( In one of his poems, Jim writes:
One of the things
that is breaking my heart is that I can't trust language to
express any thanks.
In the same spirit, one of the things that always breaks my heart is a minimum word count :( Every time I see a minimum word count, I find myself wishing we had never invented numbers in the first place :(
The class in question is Communication Ethics with Dr. Borton, and the first post needs to be about something we're required to read from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Now, Greek isn't a language I speak (and I wonder how many of my classmates speak it), but what we're actually reading is, of course, an English translation of the book :( So tonight I am posting an advance disclaimer about whatever it is that I end up posting tomorrow (or soon after) about my impending hot date with Aristotle.
So once upon a time Aristotle had something on his mind. Let's call that thing (the thing that he was thinking) "A". "A" for "Aristotle's actual thoughts".
Then Aristotle wrote this book (the Greek original). Let's call this book "B" ("B" for "book"). Now, even A and B can't really be the exact same, simply because languages aren't perfect (see, for example, the thing that is breaking Jim's heart above).
Then the translator read Aristotle's book, upon which the translator formed his/her own understanding of ... A? Or B? Was this particular translator even conscious of the fact that A and B are not likely to be identical? Who knows :( Only this much is certain: The translator's understanding of the text was some third very possibly different thing. Let's call it "C", if only to "continue" the pattern we have already established with the "A" and the "B" in the two preceding paragraphs.
And then the translator wrote this translation, which is some fourth different thing. Let's call it "D" for "different".
And now I'm supposed to read this translation, and I'm supposed to form my own understanding "E" of the "entire" mess :( and then I'm supposed to blog about it :( so, when I post "about Aristotle", what I'll be having in my head will only be Aristotle at five removes :( and what I'll end up actually posting will only be Aristotle at six removes :( sorry :( It's predestined to be an unqualified disaster :( but that's just the way that particular game works :(
On the other hand, maybe I won't have to post that disaster after all :) Here's my hope: When I e-mail this post (the one I'm writing right now, including the above explanation of why reading the translation is quite pointless) to Dr. Borton tonight, maybe he will accept this as my post on the Aristotle reading already :) The minimum word count for the Aristotle post is 200 words, and this post is over 500 words already, so it might even actually work :) wish me luck :)
One of the things
that is breaking my heart is that I can't trust language to
express any thanks.
In the same spirit, one of the things that always breaks my heart is a minimum word count :( Every time I see a minimum word count, I find myself wishing we had never invented numbers in the first place :(
The class in question is Communication Ethics with Dr. Borton, and the first post needs to be about something we're required to read from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Now, Greek isn't a language I speak (and I wonder how many of my classmates speak it), but what we're actually reading is, of course, an English translation of the book :( So tonight I am posting an advance disclaimer about whatever it is that I end up posting tomorrow (or soon after) about my impending hot date with Aristotle.
So once upon a time Aristotle had something on his mind. Let's call that thing (the thing that he was thinking) "A". "A" for "Aristotle's actual thoughts".
Then Aristotle wrote this book (the Greek original). Let's call this book "B" ("B" for "book"). Now, even A and B can't really be the exact same, simply because languages aren't perfect (see, for example, the thing that is breaking Jim's heart above).
Then the translator read Aristotle's book, upon which the translator formed his/her own understanding of ... A? Or B? Was this particular translator even conscious of the fact that A and B are not likely to be identical? Who knows :( Only this much is certain: The translator's understanding of the text was some third very possibly different thing. Let's call it "C", if only to "continue" the pattern we have already established with the "A" and the "B" in the two preceding paragraphs.
And then the translator wrote this translation, which is some fourth different thing. Let's call it "D" for "different".
And now I'm supposed to read this translation, and I'm supposed to form my own understanding "E" of the "entire" mess :( and then I'm supposed to blog about it :( so, when I post "about Aristotle", what I'll be having in my head will only be Aristotle at five removes :( and what I'll end up actually posting will only be Aristotle at six removes :( sorry :( It's predestined to be an unqualified disaster :( but that's just the way that particular game works :(
On the other hand, maybe I won't have to post that disaster after all :) Here's my hope: When I e-mail this post (the one I'm writing right now, including the above explanation of why reading the translation is quite pointless) to Dr. Borton tonight, maybe he will accept this as my post on the Aristotle reading already :) The minimum word count for the Aristotle post is 200 words, and this post is over 500 words already, so it might even actually work :) wish me luck :)
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Monday, January 12, 2015
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Friday, January 9, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Monday, January 5, 2015
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Friday, January 2, 2015
Thursday, January 1, 2015
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