Who Shall We Save?

The philosophy talk segment we listened to this week mentioned a scenario where there is a child drowning on your way to work. The women describing this scenario said that you would be more likely to save that child than to "save a child for 25 cents a day" from another country. Her explanation was because we feel closer to the child drowning because he is from America.

I strongly disagree. We are more likely to save the drowning child because it is for one, an instinct, and two, it is in the moment, the child is right there in front of you needing help. Those TV ads that we have all seen, to save a child for 25 cents a day can seem a bit like a scam and probably a lot of the time are. I do not know what my money is going to. Saving the drowning child is a one time thing and you would physically be helping someone instead of paying someone to help a child in need.

This leads to the social psychology term, diffusion of responsibility or the bystander effect. (This was brought about by the Katy Genovese murder, a women who was stabbed and killed outside of her apartment. There were no less than 38 witnesses, none of them called 911.) Basically the term is the thought "no one else is helping why should I?" Or "I don't know what to do so I'll just follow everybody else and do nothing." But you see, in the drowning incident there is no one else around you are this child's only hope and therefore feel obligated to save him/her. Everybody has seen those commercials though, and I am sure somebody else has already called to help.

My last reason is because of pride. If you were to save this child from drowning, you have much more pride than anonymously helping a stranger. Not to say that pride is a reason to help someone, but let us not lie, you are going to be pretty proud of yourself if you save a drowning kid. Is pride a reason to help someone?

Reply to Michelle's Animal Rights

Michelle's asked, "Do you think animals possess a soul or are they void of it and is just a mere "subject of life?" Before I answer that I should highlight what a "soul" is, because certainly it is not anything tangible. Of course, this could be a post of it's own, but to me the soul is the non-physical part of you, it is your consciousness, your emotions, your personality, etc. Animals have these things, they have emotions, they have simple thoughts, and they certainly have personalities.

Michelle stated that the only difference between us and animals is that we know the concept of death. I have to disagree. In Nature of Human Nature last year we outlined the main differences between humans and animals. I can't remember them all but a few were: we can think about the future, we can think abstractly, and we can lie. (I think it was Jean-Paul Sartre who said that lying is the closest we will ever come to true freedom.) But does lying, abstract thoughts, and imagining the future define our souls? I don't think so. So if it doesn't, why would anyone one think that animals don't posses a soul?

I think the whole, "they don't have a soul thing" is just a wimpy excuse to make eating them okay. I don't mean to offend any vegetarians (sorry Shelby) but I'm going to be the asshole who says "yes they do have souls, but I'm going to eat them anyways." And in the Christan omnivorous defence, Genesis clearly points out that it is okay to eat animals, as long as we respect them when they are alive.

Homo sapien means "man the wise." But does our wisdom give us the right to eat animals? How is us eating a chicken different than a lion eating a Gazelle?

Neutral ground

Annoyed with the fact that I nor the class could come to an answer about what the neutral ground is between supernatural and naturalistic, I will attempt again to logically examine the possibilities or lack thereof. It’s so hard to just throw the thought of there being a neutral ground away, especially when I know the beliefs of great philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan, Hobbes mentions God and he is a materialist. It works for him, he believes in God and doesn’t believe in free will, he is in-between naturalistic and super naturalistic. So, even though I don't understand how believing in God and Microevolution is not common ground, I'll ignore that possibility.

The first statement I made in class yesterday was under looked as a possibility because of its apparent relation of Emily's statement. Yet Emily did not mention the article by Moreland like I did, and how he states that when we look at morality, free will, rationality, and consciousness from a naturalistic point of view we cannot find an answer. I was suggesting that that could be our common ground. Or at least that is what I was trying to say.

Anyways, there are things that can be explained through the naturalistic point of view and things that can be explained through the supernatural view. Supposedly, morality, free will, rationality and conscientiousness can be explained only through the supernatural. ‘God lets us know what is wrong from right,’ yet everyone has different morals, so that can’t be explained supernaturally. The bible may point out what is wrong in the Ten Commandments and such, but that does not necessarily mean that the readers build morals from it. In fact, to me, morals seem mostly cognitive, social, and cultural. There is not just one view world wide of what is and isn’t morally right. Other cultures believe in things that we feel are just wrong. Since there is not one view of morality and it is not measurable, it cannot be empirically observed. (How would we even operationally define morality?) So with those explanations I feel that morality cannot fully be explained through either supernatural or naturalistic views. That it is it. So were we that blind? The neutral ground is not a view of something that is both naturalistic and supernaturalistic, it is in things that are not naturalistic nor supernaturalistic. That is my conclusion. Are rationality, consciousness, and free will also neutral ground?

Re: Supernatural vs. Mystery

Ben asked a series of questions pertaining to the differences between the mysterious and supernatural. To my knowledge, what is mysterious does not have to be supernatural (any affiliation with religion) yet, it is certainly possible for them to overlap. Something that is mysterious is unknown and intriguing, we have the science and/or minds to solve the given mystery, but there is just a missing link somewhere. When I think of mystery, I think of the show Unsolved Mysteries that used to be on Lifetime a long time ago. Its episodes showed dramatizations of real unsolved mystery cases, most of them being kidnapped children, murderings, disappearing people, ect. People who were kidnapped certainly were not sucked up into the sky, those who were murdered were not killed by ghosts, and those who disappeared did not dissolve into thin air. Do you see where I am going? These mysteries had absolutely nothing to do with the supernatural, we had the science to solve them, but there were not enough clues or witnesses to make the answers known.

When the supernatural and mystery do overlap it is called a miracle, a miracle could involve no scientific explanation or be against science. For example, my manager’s daughter got into a car crash where she hit a tree head on—her car was completely totaled, and when the paramedics arrived at the scene they knew it was not going to be pretty inside, but they were wrong, science and physics were wrong too—she did not even have a scratch. How do you explain that? It was a supernatural mystery—it was a miracle! And the paramedics were more than willing to admit that she had an angel with her. Supernatural means above science.

I think when it comes to discussing the supernatural in a public space, it is used as it is needed, which is not very often. Why would court rooms, or any public situation for that matter bring up religion? It is both unnecessary and politically incorrect. There is a separation of church and state for a reason, because one: they do not want to offend anyone, and two: the claims would be based on belief, and therefore have no evidentiary support and would be invalid. So my question would be why should we bring up religion in a public space? Where would it be appropriate?

Conformed Views

In Clark's Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism he discussed totalitarianism for a good portion of the essay. In my Q&A I went off on a tangent about how ridiculous Sam Harris's empirical totalitarian view of faith is. And in this blog post I want to ask the question of why is it so important for everybody to have the same beliefs? Why is it such an Utopian ideal? This thought of: I am right and everyone else who doesn't feel the same way is wrong, seems quite ignorant to me.
How boring would that be if everyone had the same beliefs? Extremely! There would be no philosophers because everyone would have the same philosophy and possibly worse there would be no debating! (Oh, the horror!) Being unique is the beauty of the mind, the beauty of being human. Why then do some people want everyone to agree with them? Sure it would be really annoying if nobody agreed with you, but if everybody did, it would be annoying too. So somebody please answer, Why is it so important for us to have the same beliefs?

Beauty in American Culture re: Women As Aesthetically Pleasing Objects

This post is in response to Emily Burke's post "Women As Aesthetically pleasing objects." In her post she discussed our cultures view of women and how we desire them to look thin. She then asked the question of why we find thin women aesthetically pleasing?

Beauty and attraction has a lot to do with trends in our culture. Why something is attractive has to do with what specific body features symbolize to our society. These could be unconscious or subconscious symbols. Years ago, our society valued women who were bigger because it represented wealth (conscious). Yet, that died out possibly because those who are larger are unhealthy, have a lower life expectancy, and are less physically fit. Thin women may also be more attractive to men, because they are less potent and gender roles suggest that the man is the potent role. (This is a subconscious symbol.)

During slavery the more pale a women was, the more attractive. Paleness represented wealth, and not having to work in the fields (also conscious). Women would walk with parasols and apply chemicals to their faces to keep them pale. If I remember right, they applied led to their faces which caused some to die from led poisoning. Beauty at the price of death? Is it that important to our culture to be viewed as beautiful that we would risk our lives? Apparently. But why? Why is being beautiful so important? I have one theory.

We believe that those who are beautiful are: happier, more liked, more successful, richer, nicer, and more likely to have a loving relationship with the opposite sex. These thoughts, whether we want to admit it or not, are partly subconscious and partly conscious.

This need to be beautiful and attractive didn’t just drive our society to death during slavery, it still is today. Instead of putting deadly chemicals on our faces many people resort to purging and just not eating at all. Plastic surgery is also a thriving desire of society, changing our noses, fat content, and lips –and for what?! To be viewed as attractive! When we take it to the extreme it is called Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a type of psychological anxiety disorder which involves obsessions and compulsions related to our looks. Obsessions are thoughts and compulsions are actions. These compulsions can involve numerous plastic surgeries, a heavy amount of applied makeup, and/ or eating disorders. Numerous plastic surgeries result in people look they are shiny plastic, and fake. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, when taken to the extreme make those suffering look like they are literally just skin and bones. In these drastic cases the individuals are suffering from serious psychological disorders perceive the way the look different than they actually do and it is all that they can think about. It is thought to deal with the amount of serotonin in the brain.

But back to why we need to be viewed as attractive. Like I said above, we associate to all of these positive things to being beautiful. Yet, correlation does not equal causation. The truth is that being beautiful gives us confidence, and confidence makes us happier, more successful, nicer, ect. Personally, I put on make-up not to be more attractive, but to have more confidence. But can we have confidence in ourselves without being beautiful or attractive? Does being thin have anything to do with confidence?

Linguistic Beauty and Beyond

The beauty of language was mentioned briefly in class, but was not elaborated on. I feel like certain words hold more beauty than others. For example the word “content” is more beautiful than the word “tent.” Amazing how much three letters can change the mood of a word! A word’s beauty can be determined either by its sound or what it represents. To Mark Twain, the most beautiful phrase in the human language is, “cellar door.” A cellar door, by all means does not represent anything beautiful nor does anything that lies in a cellar (well, most cellars anyway.) Yet, it sounds pretty. Then there are poems, poems have the unsurpassed ability to make words that are tragic, beautiful. I’ll use a poem of my own to prove my point:

Flashbacks

Framed memories sit on shelves collecting dust,
As do ones in chests
discretely seeking significance,
As we burry them –
no X to mark.

Outside,
Negatives reside on footprints wore down
from the eroding plate tectonics
Of recall.

Remembrance is among those
Of a catastrophic, brilliant decay.
Arrogant to choice;
Appealing to virtue.
Whose repressed fossils cannot be prevented
by wavering weather.

We live among painful returns.
They peak from their secluded
now and then.
Haunting self-ghosts of magnitude,
Trapping us in embarrassment and regret, so glory.
Jealous of framed memories
Colorful and wanted.
_______________________

Painful flashbacks certainly are not beautiful, but language allows us to express “ugly” feelings, events, and objects in an artistic, beautiful way. Beauty as it relates to language is more subjective than beauty in the physical. This could be because we have immense control over language –more than physicality. We can determine how rich and beautiful our vocabulary is. And what sounds beautiful to me may not sound beautiful to you.

It was also mentioned that naming something almost changes what that object is. I disagree, we attach beauty to a name because of what that name represents. Sorry Shakespeare, but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. The fact that we named it a ‘rose’ does not change the way it looks, smells, or feels. We think of the word ‘rose’ as a beautiful word because ‘ rose’ is a name for a beautiful flower.

Beauty can lie beyond objects and language as well. There can be beautiful experiences and like Nick said, “beautiful emotions.” Helping someone in need may be a beautiful experience. Yet, what would be a beautiful emotion?