phil 1013 unit 2 notes

8/10/2019 PHIL 1013 Unit 2 Notes

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/phil-1013-unit-2-notes 1/42

PHIL 1013 Unit 2 Notes

Cottingham

Partiality, Favoritism, and Morality

Impartialism is untenableo The feasibility of impartiality is doubtful

o Its doubtful that we should try to be impartial

A good parent should save their child from a burning building

The partialist faces serious difficulties but theses can be overcome.

Partialism: morally correct to favor one’s own.

o

In a special relationship

o

Unless one is under a direct or indirect duty to be impartial, it is morally

correct to favor one’s own

If famililism is permissible then so is nepotism [false]

John Cottingham

o

Thesis: Partiality can be morally correct

But not all forms of partiality are morally correct (ex. Nepotism,

cronyism, racism, sexism)

When they are correct, they are correct because they are

plausibly part of a life plan that would contribute to any human

being’s good

Moral and religion requires partiality

o Socialism, utilitarianism, Christianity, Buddhism

Extremely difficult for a normal human

being to be impartial

We must give up all the things that

human beings think are important;

to put everyone’s good above

yourself

There are circumstances in which it

wouldn’t be clearly morally right to be

impartial;

A good parent would save their own

child from a burning building ratherthan a cancer scientist

o If you don’t, you are a moral

leper; extremely distorted in

your thinking

It is morally correct to be partial

o

Not morally correct:



Nepotism, Cronyism,

Violate duties that require being impartial (hiring your

family member, rather than a stranger)

Racism, Sexism

Nationalism, Planetism

Why are cronyism and nepotism impermissible?

o

They are forms of partiality that violate duties to an institution or

organization.

Hire a family member who is unqualified, rather than a stranger

who is highly qualified

Benefit their own friend and families

It interferes/harms with your duties to the organization and

everyone in it

Grading papers:o Required to grade impartially

o Shouldn’t bias grading

Good reasons to be impartial:

Role based duties rule out nepotism and cronyism

Partiality is self-referential: one shows partiality to those in a relationship with

oneself or who are part of the same group

o Commonality to those who we don’t necessarily have a significant

relationship with

List of partialisms:

o Familialism: partialism toward your immediate family

o Kinship: partialism toward your extended family

o Clanism: partialism toward members of the same clan

o Patriotism: partialism toward your own nation

We tend to think that it’s okay/good to be patriotic, but it’s

somewhat problematic

Post WW era: the fate of our nation is significantly intertwined

with other nations

o

Racism: partialism toward your own raceo Sexism: partialism toward your own gender

o Planetism (Hypothetical): partialism toward citizens of your own planet

and its nations

o

People are often motivated by racist and sexist tendencies; but we tend

to think that we shouldn’t be.



o

Construct a blanket justification for partialism

Further explain why some are not justified

o

Ends up with selective justification strategy

Why shouldn’t we try to justify partiality by an appeal to bald preference?

o

We can arbitrarily pick our preferences and be justified That could include the non-permissible partialisms

o Racism and sexism are bad. They might be provisionally permissible in some

cases:

We feel a sense of solidarity with people who are like us

Some people think that it is okay to support others who are like us

(giving money to a person of the same race)

It is morally wrong to be partial if you are a

o Man only benefitting other men

o Woman only benefitting other women, etc.

o

You are legally permitted to spend your own money how you choose; but it isnot necessarily morally good.

We might judge people morally for picking such a specific type of

thing (blue eyed , striped cats)

What is an argument from a life plan?

o

Key premise: Moral guidelines have their basis in their tendency to promote

a flourishing life for any human.

o Some forms of partiality might figure into such a life plan.

Candidates:

Agent-related partialism;

Self-directed partialism;

Philophilic partialism

If there is a truth about moral matters, it is not up to us; there is something else that

determines it

o Aristotle: what moral guidelines and precepts come from is their ability to

promote flourishing life for human beings overall

A well developed rational capacity, virtuous habits, friendships all go

into a flourishing life

Cottingham: If partiality can be part of a life plan of flourishing

objectively good human life that could be good for any human, then it

would be morally justified. Agent-related Partialism

o We are permitted to assign some extra weight to our own goals

o

There is arguably a place for this in a flourishing human life

If we assign any importance to personal goals in a life plan, we’ve got

to allow some margin for partialism



It wouldn’t be possible for everyone to eschew (avoid) agent-related

partialism

Cottingham (365): “if each day I was to consider how each moment

could best be spent furthering, for example, global utility,…

If you want your ethics to maintain room for people to put

importance on their own individual life plans, you need toallow for some partiality.

To be really good, you must put your own goals aside, and help others

Buddhist: the sense of the self doesn’t exist in a deep sense

o

The self is just a bunch of physical and mental

processes (the self isn’t real)

o We should cultivate and understand the sense of this

no-self culture in order to be extremely impartial

Cottingham: cultivating the world to be

impartial will take years of practice; it requires

self-cultivation over a lifetime; there must be agoal to be impartial

Even if you are a Buddhist, you must

allow for some partialism

Living as a monk requires the monk to

depend upon others for support

(depend on others for food and

survival); it must come from somewhere

and must be prepared

o A monk’s life plan couldn’t be

possible/viable for everyone

Self-directed Partiality

o

We are permitted to be self-centered in out goals, giving them some extra

weight in our moral decision-making

o

This too, arguably has a place in a flourishing human life

A little bit of self-privileging may be necessary for flourishing if it’s not

carried to excess.

If you never privilege your own goals, there are so many

activities that would be morally impermissible.

o Ex. Play videogames (brings enjoyment to yourself, but

doesn’t help anybody else)

o

Ex. Playing the piano where no one else can listen,going for a run

Goals that we do simply because we enjoy

them; for our own good.

Care of self is necessary for our own good; so that we are able

to care for others.

The goal of impartiality is thus too impractical for human beings



Self-care is important for us to have the motivation to care for

others.

o Most people have joy in volunteering

Ideals and goals must be achievable by a normal human being

o We don’t want our ideals to be completely out of

reach It is best for us to endure some partiality to life a life that we would

want to live

Philophilic Partialism

o …is derived from the Greek for “one who loves his friends and family.”

o

We are permitted to assign a little bit of weight to the fact that someone is

your friend or family.

o

This arguably has a place in a flourishing human life.

Most of us want and need fulfilling relationships

You altruistically value the welfare of a person and hope thatthey flourish even after you die.

It is plausibly justified by the fact that love and friendship are

part of a blue print of human life that would be flourishing for

any human being

It would not be possible for all of us to be independent and

not have friends/family; most people gravitate towards

making friendships rather than complete isolation

Why don’t these arguments for partialisms extend to the morally problematic

partialisms?

o

Racism and sexism?

It systematically diminishes the process of flourishing

It couldn’t be a flourishing life for ALL humans

o Kinship?

It wouldn’t allow us to be impartial to those whom we share genes

with (relatives, other species, etc.)

Save Adopted child vs. Biological child from burning building

Sister vs. grandmother

o They both have equal claims, neither is justified

It is not necessary to save our genes to live a flourishing life

o Clanism and Patriotism?

Patriotism taken too far can have morally bad consequences We find them desirable because we want to be plugged into a group

that we can be loyal to.

o

Nationalism?

Only partialities that can be good and flourishing to human life are permissible



Kai Draper ‘s “Epicurus and the Value of Death”

It is irrational to be troubled by one’s own mortality.

We can overcome the fear of death by understanding why there is nothing in

death to fear.

Only pain is intrinsically bad. One’s existence comes to a permanent end with death

Neither death nor its effects can be intrinsically bad for the one who dies

o

It is irrational to be disturbed by one’s own death.

The final conclusion is ambiguous

o

It can be understood as the claim that one ought to avoid being troubled

by death… or… as the claim that there is nothing in the nature of death

that merits being troubled.

Happiness is the end. Death merits equanimity (mental calmness, composure, tranquility).

o It does not merit fear or dread or sadness or disappointment or some

other emotional distress.

Few of Epicurus’ critics address this argument.

The standard “deprivationist” response to Epicurus is to argue that even though

neither death nor its consequences can be painful, death can deprive one of a

pleasurable future and so can be bad in the comparative sense of being worse

than the alternative.

o

Epicurus argued that because neither death nor its consequences can be

intrinsically bad in the absolute sense of “bad,” death does not merit

emotional distress.

o Death prevents its subject from acquiring wisdom might deprive that

individual of the “perfect way of life.”

o Epicurus affirmed that because there is no time at which death can be

comparatively bad for its subject, death cannot be comparatively bad for

its subject.

“When we exist, death is not yet present; and when death is

present, then we do not exist.”

Because there is no time at which death can have any impact on

its subject, death cannot be bad for the one who dies in the

absolute sense of “bad.” Only unhappiness has absolute intrinsic disvalue. Thus, death

should not trouble us, for there is no time at which it can make us

unhappy.

It cannot make us unhappy prior to its arrival, and once it

arrives, our nonexistence precludes out unhappiness.



If it would be to one’s advantage to survive, then one has a good reason to avoid

death if one can.

o “He who advises the young man to live well and the old man to die well is

simple-minded, not just because of the pleasing aspects of life but

because the same kind of practice produces a good life and a good

death.” o If pain is intrinsically bad in the absolute sense of “bad,” then the absence

of pain must be intrinsically good in the comparative sense of “good.”

Epicurus believed that he could reach his final conclusion that there is no reason

to be troubled by death by establishing that neither death itself nor its

consequences can be intrinsically bad in the absolute sense of “bad.”

o Death can be instrumentally bad in the comparative sense (the

consequences of survival can be better than the consequences of death);

both the consequences of death are neither good nor bad for the one

who dies and that the consequences of survival can be good for the one

who survives (“life is desirable.”) He urged his followers to consider that consequences of their choices

o We should avoid pleasures “if we get a larger amount of what is

uncongenial from them”

o We should pursue pains if “a greater pleasure follows for a long while if

we endure the pains.” (76)

Bradley:

Instrumental good: the goodness or worthwhileness of these things lies in their

being instruments towards the attainment of the other things which are

considered good not merely as instruments

o

Something in instrumentally good in the absolute sense of “good” only if

its consequences are intrinsically good in the absolute sense of good.

Prevention value plays no role in such an account precisely

because the mere prevention of something intrinsically bad (in

the absolute sense of “bad”) is no guarantee of the production of

something intrinsically good.

Ex. Preventing pain does not lead to pleasure

Epicurus:

o

Neither death nor its consequences can be intrinsically bad (in the

absolute sense of “bad”) for the one who dies.

Moral virtue is an absolute (intrinsic) good

Moral vice is an absolute evil

Neither requires perception



Disappointment may be a rational response to learning that an unexpected

death will prevent one from receiving some good that one reasonably expected

to receive

Dissatisfaction may be a rational response to the realization that death will

prevent one’s life as a whole from being worth living

Frustration may be a rational response to learning that death will prevent onefrom completing some valuable, long-term project, especially if one had invested

tremendous time and effort toward its completion.

The only disadvantage to death is the fact that it deprives us of certain absolute

goods

Epicurus’ Argument:

o “As a hedonist, he held that only pain is intrinsically bad. As a materialist

atomist, he held that one’s existence comes to a permanent end with

death. Because he also believed that the effects of death do no precede

their cause, he inferred that neither death nor its effects can beintrinsically bad for the one who dies, and on that basis, he claimed that

it is irrational to be disturbed by one’s own death.” (71).

1. “Only pain is intrinsically bad”

2. “One’s existence comes to a permanent end with death”

No part of you lives on after death to continue to feel

pleasure or pain. Those things die with you

3. Therefore, “neither death or its affects can be intrinsically bad for

the one who dies” (from 1 and 2)

If you have no remaining capacity for pain, there is no bad

that can happen to you

Death cannot harm you

4. Therefore, “it is irrational to be disturbed by one’s own death”

(from 3)

Once you are dead, there is nothing left to fear

o This wrong view of death causes us unnecessary

pain. If we had the correct view, we wouldn’t be so

anxious.

Anything other than pain is instrumentally bad because it causes pain???

Pleasure is the only intrinsically “good”

Does Epicurus think that death could be comparatively worse than life?o Draper presents the evidence for both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers

We are harmed by death because death deprives us of pleasures

that we could have if we extend our lives

We would be better off if we could avoid death

A life of wisdom is a life of perfect quality; which takes time to

cultivate



Death can only be worse than life if there is a time where

death can be worse than life.

o Death is nothing to us because when we exist,

death is not present. When death is present, we do

not exist.

o

When we are dead, there can be no better orworse because we cannot experience pleasure or

pain

o If there is no possibility of harm in both states, the

possibility of pleasure in one state might be better

o He concludes ‘yes’

Life is comparatively better than death

Does this conflict with Epicurus’s argument?

o Draper says ‘no’

o He makes a distinction between the comparative sense of ‘bad’ and the

absolute sense of it.

Life is comparatively better than death

Two distinctions:

o Intrinsic vs. Instrumental

Intrinsic goods are goods in themselves

Pleasure is intrinsic good

Pain in intrinsic bad

Instrumental goods are good because they are a means to other

goods

Everything else is instrumental because it it’s a means to

pleasure/pain

o Comparative vs. absolute

Comparative goods are good by comparison to something worse

Recovering from illness is comparatively better/good

actually being ill

Sentenced to 5 years in prison is better compared to 10

years.

Absolute goods are good in an absolute sense. They are good

without qualification (they don’t have to be good by comparison

to something worse).

But recovering from illness is not necessarily good in itself

But 5 years in prison is not good in an absolute sense

Four combinations:

o Comparative intrinsic good

Good by comparison, in and of itself

Death is a comparative intrinsic bad. We would rather be

alive than dead. Death is worse than life (75).

o

Absolute intrinsic goods



Good without qualification, in and of itself

A pleasurable existence (hedonistic)

The only intrinsic bad is pain

o

Death is not absolute intrinsic bad. Nothing can be

good or bad during death.

o

Comparative instrumental goods

Has consequences that are good by comparison

“It might be objected that even if Epicurus used the terms

“good” and “bad” to refer to things that are intrinsically

good or bad in the absolute sense of those terms, he

surely recognized that something are instrumentally bad.

Thus, inasmuch as critics…argues that the notion of

“instrumental value” is comparative in nature, and hence

that death can be instrumentally bad for the one who dies,

they threaten Epicurus’ position on death” (75).

o

Exercise makes us strong. Strength is comparativelybetter than weakness.

o Absolute instrumental goods

Has consequences that are good without qualification

o Exercise gives us pleasure for the activities

performed during exercise.

Is death an absolute intrinsic bad?

o No

Death is not absolute intrinsic bad. Nothing can be good or bad

during death because we cannot feel pain or pleasure.

Is death a comparative intrinsic bad?

o Yes

Death is a comparative intrinsic bad. We would rather be alive

than dead. Death is worse than life (75).

Is death an absolute instrumental bad?

o

No

In death we cannot feel pain or pleasure.

Is death a comparative instrumental bad?

o Yes

It deprives us the means of getting pleasure.

What if you aren’t a hedonist? Can there be things other than pleasure and pain

that are intrinsically good or bad?

o Candidate intrinsic good:

Moral virtue



Being just and courageous and honest are goods, even if

they bring us pain instead of pleasure. They are good even

if they fail to give us a flourishing life

o Draper: You can’t be morally virtuous or vicious in

death. Therefore, Epicurus’ argument still stands.

o

Candidate intrinsic bad: Wasted life, failure, betrayal, moral vice

Nagel: Wasted life, failure, and betrayal are intrinsically

bad

Draper: It would be odd to say that these things are bad

for the ones who are dead. Once you are dead, you cannot

be touched by regret or disappointment. Therefore, they

can’t be bad for us.

o

All of these things are avoidable in life. We can

make choices in life to make sure that our projects

are not all wasted/failures.o We don’t get to choose when we die. Sometimes

failure might not be avoidable because you can die

before you are able to finish a project. But these

things are not caused by death, it is a cause of our

life choices.

o

Epicurus is correct

Should we fear death?

o Epicurus: death isn’t bad for us and we shouldn’t fear it.

Should we fear it as a comparatively worse state?

o

Draper: “it is comparatively bad for me as I cannot run a mile in under a

minute…” (78).

o

These things are comparatively bad, but none of them warrant fear

o

A person who is dead doesn’t deserve our pity because they can no

longer be harmed

o Fear for something comparatively worse than death might be a stretch

Disappointment, dissatisfaction seem more appropriate than fear.

Epicurus: we shouldn’t be disappointed, distressed, etc.

We shouldn’t fear death.

o Draper: “Nevertheless, fear seems to be an odd emotional response to

the mere denial of positive benefits, however numerous or large thosebenefits might be” (79).



Thomas Nagel “The Absurd”

The central theme of Nagel’s paper is the absurdity of human life

o Absurdity, as a property of a situation, connotes both irrationality and

ridiculousness

If it doesn’t make sense; has a certain quality of silliness or

pointlessness Ridicule, contempt

Pants falling down when being knighted

Here are the three usual reasons given for thinking that life is absurd

1. “Nothing we do now will matter in a million years.”

This is supposed to support the conclusion that anything that does

not matter in a million years cannot matter at any time

But Nagel thinks that this is an example of “begging the question”

He says that the only way we could be sure that nothing

now will matter in a million years would be to know that

“it doesn’t matter, period.” The argument gives us no reason to think that nothing

could matter to us now, and if it could matter now, it’s

possible for it to matter in a million years.

2. “We are tiny specks in the infinite vastness of the universe; our lives are

mere instants even on a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one.”

This embeds the assumption that a longer life would be more

meaningful. This assumption is doubtful

Long lives are not obviously more meaningful

Immortal characters: are often imagined to be miserable

and bored in virtue of their immortality

o

Nothing has meaning if you have all the time in the

world to do everything

3. “Because we are going to die, all chains of justification must leave off in

mid-air.”

Nagel isn’t convinced that this makes our lives absurd or

meaningless because it embeds a wrong way of thinking about

justification.

Our actions are not all justified in a single chain of

justification. There are separate chains that start and end

throughout our lives. (717)

The idea that each link in a chain of justification is justifiedby another future link is self-undermining, because:

o Either a) the chain stops somewhere and nothing is

justified, because it requires a further justification

Taking asprin to end a headache

o

Or b) it goes on forever and therefore never

completes the requirements for justification.



Each chain has to be justified by something

further, so the project of achieving

justification is never complete

“Yet I believe they attempt to express

something that is difficult to state, but

fundamentally correct” (718).

Life is absurd

What do people do when they find themselves in some kind of absurd situation?

(718)

o Try to restore the reality to the pretention so that it is more realistic

o Or revise pretentions

o Try to get out of the situation entirely

Why is life absurd?

o

The absurdity comes from “the collision between the seriousness withwhich we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding

everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt”

(718).

There is a universal absurdity to our lives

What is this perspective?

o It’s one made possible by our reflective capacity.

We usually use it to weigh one particular aim against another.

Decide which things in life are worth more pursuing

But we can also use it to reflect on whether anything we might

pursue at all could be meaningful

None of the choices we make are significant enough or

worthy enough of the intense energy and concern that we

give them.

o From this perspective, we judge our pretensions to be too great, but we

continue to act as if they were important.

We go to college because we want a good job, to have money to

do what we want

720: “we step back to find that the whole system of justification

and criticism, which controls our choices and supports our claims

to rationality, rests of responses and habits that we never

question, that we should not know how to defend withoutcircularity, and to which we shall continue to adhere even after

they are called into question.

Objection 1: absurdity is not an inevitable property of a human life because we

can give our lives meaning by serving some cause that is greater than ourselves.

o Nagel’s response:



What would it take for these greater purposes to give our lives

meaning:

They would have to be themselves meaningful

To be meaningful to us, we would need to know that they

are meaningful

Nagel’s discussion of absurdity

o An absurd situation is one where there is a discrepancy between our

pretensions – the way we envision things ongoing – and the reality – the

way they actually are that sadly fails to live up to our pretensions

What do people do when they find themselves in some kind of absurd position?

o Try to recover and restore their aspirations to pretension

o Try to revise their pretensions

o Try to get out of the situation entirely

Objection 2: from our ordinary perspective, to say that something isn’tmeaningful is to say that something else, by contrast is.

o But from the artificial bird’s eye view perspective, we can’t say what’s

meaningful. And so the claim that nothing matters from this point of view

isn’t a meaningful action.

The claim that nothing matters isn’t actually a meaningful claim.

Because there is no contrast to be made.

We can’t make judgments about ….

o Nagel’s response: Comparison with epistemological skepticism

Epistemological skepticism: Suggests that we are never really

justified in our beliefs of what is true.

Has to do with justifications with actions and never with beliefs

There doesn’t seem to be any way that we can justify the

elements within the ordinary sense of justification.

I form beliefs of the basis of vision. And they are justified

because our vision is reliable (Ordinary beliefs). But we can

only compare our justification of vision from our other

senses. There is nothing you can do to prove that your

senses are reliable. We could be possessed by an evil

demon.

o P237: The system only works by taking the world largely for granted.

(pretensions) It is possible that all of it is groundless. All of this is tomotivate us that it is okay to doubt the justification of particular beliefs

and goals. And ask whether the whole system is justified.

Explained by our natural confidence

Natural confidence is no substitute for justification

So what does this mean for us?



o We don’t stop forming beliefs because skeptical doubts are brought to

our attention. Nor do we quit pursuing goals.

What the introduction of a broader view changes is our attitude

about those beliefs and activities.

Compared to staying in a marriage with a person who

cheated on you. The relationship is the same, but youdon’t trust each other anymore. (Less pretense than we

had before)

o This altered attitude does not allow us to escape absurdity, but it helps.

Because the absurdity comes from the contrast between our

pretensions and reality.

We can’t remove it entirely, because there will always be a

seriousness that is a pretension.

“In continuing to live and work and strive, we take ourselves

seriously in action no matter what we say” (724).

What should we do?

o We don’t have the option to refuse the abstract perspective that made

doubt possible

o We don’t want to obsess about it and stop pursuing any goals.

Mice have no meaningful lives, but they are also not absurd.

Should we despair? Should we scorn the absurdity of life, as Camus suggested?

o Nagel says “no”.

We aren’t capable of willing ourselves to forget.

We cannot pursue anything at all without an attitude that

supports its importance

Nagel doesn’t think that this kind of despair, scorn is warranted by

the absurdity of the human situation

o 726 this seems to me romantic and slightly self-pitying. Our absurdity

warrants neither that much distress nor that much defiance…Absurdity is

one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most

advanced and interesting characteristics

In the end, Nagel says that an attitude of irony is the right one.

o “We can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or

despair” (727).

85 on the Final [360/400] (assuming reading guide #4 = 45/50 = 275 total) = A = 450 -

500

45 on the Final [320/400] (assuming reading guide #4 = 45/50) = B = 400 - 449



Richard Taylor “The Meaning of Human Existence”

Why isn’t existence meaningful in itself?

o

It is possible for a life to be without meaning.

Because there is nothing we can do to make our lives meaningful

Like cogs in a clock wound up and set in motion until themotion cannot sustain itself.

Taylor believes that outset that we can redeem ourselves of the

fate of a meaningless existence.

Life itself isn’t meaningful on its own.

o

Our lives can be devoid of meaning in the same way that an animal’s can.

o

It is about how you live, and not the simple fact of your existence.

o

There is nothing special about human life in particular about

meaningfulness.

People see themselves as meaningful to them The fact that we cling to life doesn’t necessarily mean that it is

meaningful. It is something that we do as an instinct, instead of a

rational, reflective choice. It is just instinct that motivates us to

cling to life. We don’t do it for good reasons.

The things that are done in life make it meaningful, not simply

that fact that we exist.

Three images of a meaningless life:

o

Sisyphus

Rolls a boulder up a hill that falls down over and over again.

Completes his task endlessly.

The task doesn’t have any value

The rocks are not valuable; there is no inherent value in

the task; it is purposeless and endlessly repetitive

o The hole-digging convict

Dig holes in the ground only to fill them up again over and over

for the rest of his life.

The holes do not have a purpose; it is an endless task that

he is forced to repeat

o

The chanting nuns

A convent in Quebec chant the same prayers (in Latin) over andover without ceasing for their entire lives. Not meaning full

because they chant the same prayer over and over with no

particular purpose/aim.

There is no inherent value in chanting the prayers over and

over



What are the features of these images that make them meaningless existences?

o It’s not pain.

o It is their…

Repetitiveness

Purposelessness

Endlessness Achieving pleasure for the person is NOT a meaningful life.

How do these images of meaninglessness compare to an ordinary human life?

o

The slaughterhouse worker (slash cows over and over)

The work is repetitive, and endless

Is it purposeless? Taylor thinks so.

The task as some kind of purpose, but it might not be

meaningful; it provides the meat that we eat, but it

doesn’t necessarily give his life a meaning

The slaughterhouse worker gets pleasure from his life (butthat doesn’t mean that it is meaningful)

Pleasure doesn’t amount to purpose

Social/Community value in the labor doesn’t amount to

purpose.

o What about the rest of us? Taylor suggests that a lot of our activities are

endlessly repetitive and of dubious purpose.

Monotonous task

Give you an idea that the person is replaceable.

The job can be valued by society, but it still has dubious worth if

that person is replaceable.

It is not particularly meaningful

How does the human life compare to an animal’s life?

o

The ground mole.

Spend their lives digging into the earth for food and shelter. Have

vestigial eyes (see only light and dark)

Only lives to dig and to find food to sustain itself and reproduce to

have offspring that do the same activities after it dies.

Dubious meaning

Human tasks are similarly endless and whatever they

achieve is illusory, so we repeat the task over and over.

We make money so we can spend it, and make more to

keep spending money, but there is no lasting purpose.

We keep repeating these tasks until we die.

We toil at these tasks that nothing comes of. There is no

greater purpose. We pursue these tasks mindlessly.



Variations on the nun case: Would these changes reinforce meaninglessness or

would they alleviate it?

o The nuns have no freedom of choice

Lack of choice doesn’t make a life more meaningful. We have no

reason to think that the task achieves a bigger purpose that would

lend meaning to the task even though isn’t done by choice. Existence in activity is not sufficient

o The nuns freely choose, but they do so irrationally; they’ve been

indoctrinated to believe it to be a noble life

They do it out of a sense of desire for the activity itself because

they believe it is a noble task. The source of desire is not internally

motivated. It is an externally forced motivation.

Choice is present, and that is important; but the choice is an

irrational one. It is not for reasons; it is for motivation that has

been indoctrinated.

It is a choice to live a life that is not purposeful or meaningful.

Life, activity, choice= not sufficient

o The nuns are motivated to choose their life by deep religious conviction

and belief in the power of prayer

Belief that something is meaningful is not the same as it

ACTUALLY being meaningful. They believe that it has a grand

purpose. They are being deceived.

o

The nuns are motivated to choose their life by deep religious conviction

and believe in the power of prayer. And their beliefs are true.

They are achieving something even though it is a never ending

task. It is not purposeless. It achieves something lasting; but it is

still a ceaseless labor for a task that is never complete.

The fact that some real purpose is achieved is part of what it takes for a life to

have meaning, but it is still not SUFFICIENT, on its own.

o There are additional conditions to be met

What are those conditions?

o The activities aim at a significant, non-illusory, lasting purpose

o That purpose is achieved

The task cannot be endless

o The purpose is of the individual’s own creation

It doesn’t give meaning to life is the goal is forever unattainable



John Locke “Essay Concerning Human Understanding: Chapter 27: Identity & Diversity”

Personal Identity

o

Personal Identity: what makes a person at one moment identical with

that same person at another moment

“Identity” is being used here in the numerical sense, not the qualitative sense

o Our ordinary concept of a person includes…

A human organism

And a set of psychological features (thoughts, memories, and

personality)

o Am I essential a thinking thing or am I my body?

Psychology and body are conceptually separable – we can imagine one being

present without the other.

o

There are human organisms that lose the usual psychological featureswhen they suffer very serious brain injuries

o And we can imagine a person’s psychological features residing in a

different body

Since these two components of persons are separable, we run into trouble

deciding whether someone is the same person in problem cases.

Problem cases

o Brain death

o

Sever brain injury

o

Permanent amnesia

o

Multiple personalities

o Body switching

o Fission/fusion

o Duplication

In “Identity & Diversity”, Locke is concerned with the identity conditions of

beings over time

o Identity conditions: the conditions necessary for something to remain the

same (numerically) identical thing

Locke distinguishes the identity conditions for different sorts of beingso The identity conditions for a substance:

The body (or rather the group of atoms that make it up) must

remain intact

It doesn’t matter whether they’re being reconfigured

o

The identity conditions for a living organism (a plant or an animal)



Remaining intact is not necessary for the persistence of a living

organism

It must participate in the “same continued life…organized in the

same united body” (114).

o The identity conditions for a person are still different…

A person can be self-identical without being the same man (thesame human animal, the same body) and vice versa

What is a person?

o A person is essentially a conscious being with powers of thought, reason,

and reflection.

What are the identity conditions for a person?

o Personal identity is based on the continuity of a person’s consciousness.

We remain the same person as far back as our consciousness

extends

Section 9 (p 115)

Is consciousness a thinking substance? (Section 10)

o He argues that it couldn’t be

Substances must remain intact to remain self-identical

Consciousness is interrupted by forgetfulness, distraction, and

sleep.

o We don’t become a different person when our consciousness is

interrupted

If we are in a coma, our consciousness continues and we are the

same person when we wake up, as before the coma.

Elements of a person:

o Body (substantial)

Physical substance

o Consciousness (insubstantial)

Thoughts, memories, psychology, etc.

o Thinking Substance (sometimes referred to as “soul”) (substantial)

Section 14

o

“Can it be different persons if the same substance does the thinkingthroughout?”

o

Ex. With reincarnation, your soul substance is recycled in new beings

Thought experiment: the same soul (a substance) “that was in

Nestor or Thersites at the siege of Troy” is in you.

You have no consciousness of their past actions.

They have been replaced with your memories



Can you be the same person? Can their actions be yours?

For Locke, a soul that retains none of these same

consciousness as you is not you

You cannot be the same person.

Section 15

o

Another Thought Experiment: explains how, at the resurrection (fromChristian theology), it wouldn’t matter if you had the same body as long

as the same consciousness inhabited the body

Locke: The body doesn’t matter. You can be resurrected in any

matter.

As long as the same consciousness stays with the soul that

inhabits the body

But the soul alone would not be accounted enough to make the

same man.

o Thought experiment: A prince’s consciousness has been relocated into a

cobbler’s body. The cobbler’s consciousness has been destroyed. Locke thinks that the cobbler remains the same man (the same

living organism) but he is a different person (the prince).

We would not hold the prince (in the cobbler’s body) responsible

for the actions of the cobbler

Section 19

o Locke explains a few of the implications of this view

If Socrates and the mayor of Queensborough shared the same

consciousness, they would be the same person

If Socrates in his waking life and Socrates while asleep

(sleepwalking) have different consciousnesses, then they are

different people

Section 20

o

Locke answers whether a person whose memory of a certain period has

been obliterated, never to return, is the same person?

Think: blackout drunk, madness, serious amnesia, brain damage

to the memory centers

You are not yourself; we do not hold you responsible.

We can sometimes consider some people less culpable of

a crime, especially if there is an alteration to your thinking.

A person can branch off into a different person and return again

This explains why we have different standards of punishment forone who does something deliberately and one who does

something in a fit of temporary insanity.

Section 20-21

o

How is it that the same man could be not one person, but two?



IF there are two distinct consciousnesses with unique streams of

thought and memory, then they are different persons, even if

there is only one man (one body) that harbors them.

Section 21

Why couldn’t Socrates the man (the human organism) be what we

mean when we talk about Socrates the person? Locke enumerates a couple of different things we can

mean when we talk about an individual man (ex. Socrates)

By “man” we can mean:

1.

The immaterial Thinking thing (soul)

2.

The human animal

3.

The combination of the two

Locke argues that we couldn’t identify Socrates the person

with any of these.

o With 1 (soul), it would be possible for people living

in different times in different bodies to be thesame person even though they have none of the

other’s thoughts or memories.

o And with 2 (animal) and 3 (soul and animal), it

would be impossible for a person to be the same

person after the death of the body.

It wouldn’t matter which body or soul you

inhabit after resurrection because any body

or soul can render your consciousness

Section 22

o Locke answers the question, “Isn’t the person who does bad things when

they are sleepwalking or when they are drunk responsible for them”?

The law can’t determine whether the action actually belongs to

the person.

You are not the same person as when you are

sleepwalking or drunk

So the law punishes things that do not belong to the person

punished

The law punishes the human organism that committed the

crime. We wouldn’t want people to be able to avoid

punishment on the grounds that a person is sleepwalking.

The law can’t determine which person committed thecrime necessarily.

Sometimes we might not be culpable. True culpability

might not belong to the person who consists of the usual

stream of consciousness. IF it does belong to them, they

know it because their conscious tells them so, and God

knows it. But the law cannot identify who is responsible.



Bernard Williams “The Self and the Future”

Argues against psychological identity view

Argues for body identity view

Questions:o Can we change bodies?

o Or do we change consciousnesses?

What would happen to a person if we took 2 people and switch

their consciousnesses.

The thought experiment that Williams considers is one involving moving a chain

of memories move from A to B.

o Could a chain of memories move from A to B?

o If conceivably could if..

The brains of A and B were switched, or

The information stored in A’s brain was recorded on a device andthen transferred to B’s brain

Phase 1 Cases (163-166)

o

The Original Case:

A and B are experimental subjects who have agreed to change

bodies.

One will be given a money reward and the other tortured.

The experimenter solicits which outcome each prefers.

A prefers that the B-body will be rewarded

B prefers that the A body will be rewarded

One will not receive his or her preference.

Suppose the experimenter announced that he planned to reward

the A-body and torture the B-body.

B will believe his request is going to be honored.

A will believe that his is not

o

They believe that they will be changing bodies.

o

Case 2:

This time, the experimenter does not announce which outcome

he will choose and goes ahead with the switch. He then proceeds to reward the A-body person and torture the B-

body person.

The A-body person (with B’s consciousness) will be happy

that he (B) got what he wanted.

The B-body person (with A’s consciousness) will complain

about the outcome.



o A didn’t want to be tortured

This suggests that they believe that they went where their

consciousness went after the switch.

We are not concerned for out bodies if our consciousness

has been relocated.

o

Their concern for their future selves did not go with their body.o To care about what happens to me in the future does not include what

happens to the body.

o Case 3:

A and B are altruistic

A prefers that the A-body will be rewarded.

B prefers that the B-body will be rewarded.

The experimenter makes the switch, then rewards the A-body

person and tortures the B-body person.

The B-body person (with A’s consciousness) will beunhappy about being tortured, but will believe that his

choice has been honored.

The A-body person (with B’s consciousness) will be happy

about the reward, but will acknowledge that he expressed

a preference to receive the torture.

o The A-body person got what he wanted, but not what he wanted.

o The B-body person

o They believed that they did switch bodies after the experiment

o

Case 4:

A is selfish, so he requests that the B-body will be rewarded

B is an altruist, so he also requests that the B-body will be

rewarded

The experimenter honors both requests, rewarding the B-body

person and torturing the A-body person

The B-body persons

o 165. The B body person likes what he was receiving, recalls choosing it,

and congratulates himself on the wisdom of his choice;

o They believe they are switching bodies.

Wiliams argues that the experiment is best describes as “changing bodies” as

he’s already imagined it.

o What would it be like if they thought they were changing psychologies

instead?

If they think they’re changing psychologies, they’ll be concerned

about the psychological traits of the other.



o Williams thinks that the “changing bodies” description makes most sense

with these cases (as they’ve been presented so far).

o They’ve gone where their consciousnesses went. And switched bodies.

The memories that they have seem more important than the bodies that

they have.

Phase 2 Cases (167,172)

o The First Person Perspective Case:

A is told that he will be tortured, but first, his psychology will be

altered so that he will have none of the same memories.

Williams imagines that A is told that he is going to be tortured tomorrow, but

that something would happen first so that he would not remember anything that

he now remembers.

o He (appropriately) feels fear.

It makes the case seem mysterious. When it’s described this way, the torture is being presented to A as happening

to A himself . And this is in accordance with a plausible principle:

o “…that my undergoing physical pain in the future is not excluded by any

psychological state I may be in at the time” (169).

Would it make a difference to A if he knew that his psychology would be

produced in B’s body?

o Not obviously.

o

To convince us, Williams considers some more cases

Phase 2 Cases (167,172)

o

The First Person Perspective Case:

A is told that he will be tortured, but first, his psychology will be

altered so that he will have none of the same memories.

Additional cases:

1.

A is subjected to an operation which produces total amnesia

a. Fear is appropriate. You would still think that the torture would be

happening to you

2. Amnesia is produced in A, and other interference leads to certain changes in his

charactera. Amnesia + new memories.

b. Fear is appropriate

c. New memories wouldn’t remove the fear of being tortured.

3.

Changes in his character are produced, and at the same time certain illusory

“memory” beliefs are induced in him. These are the

a.

Amnesia + new memories (fictitious memories)



b.

Fear is appropriate.

c. Psychological state of going under pain doesn’t affect the pain. It still

seems like it will happen to you

4. The same as 3, except that both the character traits and the “memory”

a. Amnesia + new memories (modeled off of a real person)

b.

Fear is still appropriate.c. You will still fear the torture being done to you

5. The same as 4, except that the result is produced by putting the information into

A from the brain of B, by a method which leaves B the same as he was before

a. New memories (of another person’s actual memories)

b.

Fear is still appropriate.

6. The same happens to A as in 5, but B is not left the same, since a similar

operation is conducted in the reverse direction.

a. Fear is still appropriate.

b. There is no difference in what happens to him. The only difference is

what happens to someone else.

Williams asks whether these descriptions are fearsome

If we resist Williams’ claim that A’s fear is appropriate in 6, then there is a

problem.

o If it’s not appropriate in 6, it’s not appropriate in 5.

In 5, A does not exist, so fear of being tortured is not appropriate

Williams thinks A still exists in cases 1 and 2.

Because we still have something substantial to identify the

person with. After amnesia is produced, we are still able toidentify A.

But 3 and 4 are unclear.

Some cases are on the borderline, at best.

The memories given to A are fictitious memories.

Can a line be drawn between 3 and 4?

o They might be borderline (indeterminate) cases/

How is fear affected by indeterminacy?

o

If there is indeterminacy about who will be harmed?

We can’t be sure that it will happen to me, but fear is stillprobably appropriate.

Fear wouldn’t be as intense as it would (for a range of people)

than when I would know that it would happen to me.

o If there is indeterminacy about the nature of the harm?

Some bad thing is going to happen (not sure what to expect)

A’s fear of the coming torture is not like either of these.



o P175: “in the present case, fear of torture…

In thinking about the imminent torture, if a is imagining what the

torture is going to be like for him, he is making an appropriate

assumption that is it to him that the torture is going to happen.

An Incurable Difficulty: its not really clear how he should fear.

Fear is both appropriate and inappropriate at the sametime.

o The concept of personal identity doesn’t apply to any of these cases.

Why is it no comfort to treat identity as something that we could just stipulate in

the same manner that we would stipulate something for legal reasons?

o It’s not clear that our stipulating something doesn’t make it true in these

indeterminate cases.

o Stipulating doesn’t help, or allay A’s fear.

How does Williams conclude?

o

There are different focal points when we think of personal identity fromfirst person and third person perspective.

o He wanted it to seem obvious to us that the two perspectives are

different.

o We focus on the mental aspects of the person. That makes it seems more

natural for us to identify people with personality features. (3rd

person)

o

It makes us more nature to focus on bodily continuity and that the body

isn’t essential to them. (1st

person) Especially with amnesia (where there

is nothing to identify the person with).

o The way he framed the case makes a difference in what we think would

happen.

o

The first conclusions made in the first set of cases can seem wrong.

Williams uses two perspectives (3rd

and 1st

) to describe similar cases. He does

this to show that the ready assent that we are prone to give the view that

personal identity is grounded in consciousness on the third person description is

suspicious.

o

True

Personal identity is essentially associated with your consciousness rather than

our body.



Tamar Gendler

What is a cantilever?

o An architecture term

o

A drawbridge

o

2 parts of a cantilever make up a drawbridge

Can be separated A persons psychological (mental) features and physical

features can be separate

The ordinary components of persons:

o

Physical components

o

Mental components

The components are conceptually separable.

o We demonstrate this with thought experiments.

Thesis statement: “My goal in this paper is to suggest reasons for thinking that

this methodology may be less reliable than its proponents take it to be, for

interesting and systematic reasons” (593). o She thinks it’s the kind of concept that has necessary and sufficient

conditions

This way of arguing is totally ill conceived. It doesn’t get us anywhere

Objections to the usual approach to personal identity (using these cases that

push the limits of the concept) can either…

o Objections to the particular thought experiments

Ex. Brain transplants are not biologically possible

o

Objections to the use of thought experiments applied to this particular

concept

Gendler’s complaint is one of these

o Personal identity is one of those personal concepts.

o Thought experiments are only useful if the concept has necessary and

sufficient conditions

Why is personal identity is different?

o In the vast majority of cases, both characteristics (physical and

psychological) are present.

Because that’s the way it plays out most of the time in nature.

“But this means that our evaluation of the exceptional case willdepend upon which mapping we use in making this assimilation.

And this means that our ability to make sense of such cases

outruns our ability to make reliable judgments about them” (595).

o We aren’t capable of making reliable judgments about unusual cases.



Why don’t the extreme cases in nature that somewhat resemble the thought

experiments give us reason to embrace the thought experiments as a guide to

understanding personal identity.

o

None of these cases in nature question

o

There has never been a case where someone actually changed bodies

with another persono One body supports a single psychology, the vast majority of the time.

o We end up assimilating unusual cases to persons depending on which

personal identity of a person we are focusing on.

o It is permissible to say that if a person could swap bodies, that they could

be the same person. But in unusual cases, out intuitions just don’t stretch

that far. We can be right, more or less, but we wouldn’t be able to have a

verdict on the really unusual cases.

Gender rehearses Locke’s taxonomy of types of identity over time

o

Non-living non-artificial entities: contiguity of the body Identity is a sameness of body

o

Living things (plants, animal): same life

Undergo significant changes in life (acorn to oak tree) but they are

the same entity

They are numerically one

Identity is a sameness of life

Humans are treated as a “Special case” of animal

o Persons: same consciousness

We retain the sameness of life

The life of a person remains the same life as long as there is a

sameness of consciousness

The prince and the cobbler:

o Locke uses a thought experiment to show that sameness of animal (body)

and sameness of person (consciousness) are different.

The cobbler’s body would be identical with the qua human

animal, but the psychology would be identical with the qua

human person.

o

Locke demonstrated that event though these two things tend to coincide,

they are separate

Lcoke’s thought experiment has 3 important features:

o

There appears to have been a body switch because the consciousness ofone person has been moved to another

o

There is a mechanism described which explained how the switch was

produced

o The mechanism is that a substance which harbored the consciousness

was moved from one body to another.

These features accomplish the following three tasks:



o “(1) That we can make sense of a story In which two personalities ‘switch

bodies’;

o

(2) That we can describe a mechanism by which such a switch might take

place;

o (3) That that mechanism involves some transfer of substance” (599).

As cases get more complex, it is not clear to us how to make judgments

Contemporary Variations of Locke’s Thought Experiment

o In some variations, only 2 (the mechanism) gets altered

Instead of an exchange of souls, we are asked to imagine an

exchange of brains

Brown is Brownson, Robin is Robinson

More complicated: Fission Cases (based on Sperry’s split brain research)

o

So we can imagine two bodies with one divided braino In this case, it’s obvious whether Brown survives as one, the other, or

neither

Brain is split and shared between 2 twins.

Brownson 1 and Brownson 2

According to Gendler, it’s not clear

Neither has more of a claim than the other, but it would

be weird to say that they are both identical to Brown

In some variations, (3 the transfer of substance) is modified instead of (2).

Instead of changing substances, there is an exchange of information: brain states

are modified or duplicated in a computer or another brain.

o There is an artificial brain; can be similar to the transplant cases

More Complicated: Teletransportation cases

o A computer collects and stores information about a person’s brain and

body and recreates the person in another location

o But if this is possible, it’s also possible that the machine could make

duplicates of a person in different places.

Summary of all the possibilities (601-602)

o Brain transfers and exchanges

o Fission (brain split)

o

Brain state transfers, exchanges, and duplication (computer memories)o Teletransportation

o Independent replication (stores memories in a computer)

602

it seems to be undeniable that we can make sense of such scenarios. Each

represents a state of affairs that seems metaphysically, perhaps even physically



possible. But this does not mean that we can make reliable judgments about

how we would or should respond to such scenarios, were we to encounter them.

Gendler on William’s brain state transfer thought experiments

o Williams describes the experiment 2 ways…

o

To push us toward the conclusion that A might be right in beingconcerned for the future of his body, Williams presents 6 possible

outcomes for A in this experiment [in handout]

Gendler: Framing

o Scenario (2 versions):

You are on your way to a play and you drop a $10 bill. When you

get to the theater, you realize that you lost it, but you have other

money in your wallet to buy a $10 ticket. Do you buy it?

Lost Cash/Money

You are on your way to a play and you dron a $10 ticket that youpurchased in advance. When you get to the theater, you realize

that you lost it, but you have other money in your wallet to buy a

new one. Do you buy it?

Lost Ticket

o We reason on the basis of different principles depending on how the case

is framed.

It’s economically imprudent to immediately replace items that we

lost or damaged (lost ticket)

When we lose things, we don’t necessarily immediately

replace them

We hesitate to say that we’ll buy a new ticket if we lost a

ticket

Its imprudent to make ourselves unhappy to deny ourselves a

pleasure in one domain simply because something went wrong in

another domain (lost cash)

We don’t take the losses in other domains to take away

from the pleasure in another domain.

William’s cases likewise are affected by how the experiments are framed

o Gender says: The usual arguments about personal identity attempt to

show that one of the frames is really the correct one.o This makes it understandable how we’d have different opinions

o Both frames are permissible, but the usual arguments show that one is

correct and the other is wrong.

Williams didn’t do enough in his paper to convince us that we

should be convinced by one case or the other.



There are 2 possible approaches to understanding the significance of exceptional

cases

o The exception as scalpel strategy:

Exceptional cases allow us to narrow the range of what we think

are essential features of being a particular sort of thing

If X usually has features, a b c and d. X only has b and d, then a and c are accidental features.

They are not part of our necessary and sufficient

conditions.

o A body isn’t a necessary condition for personal

identity

o

This strategy falls through because we can also

imagine a person surviving with drastically changed

psychology.

o Yields no necessary conditions for being a person

We cut away to mucho This is to be expected with this sort of concept

o There are not necessary and sufficient conditions

for a personal identity

o The exceptions as cantilevers strategy

“Cantilever” is an architectural term that refers to a beam that is

supported at only one end.

If exceptional cases are persons, they are so “by courtesy” in

virtue of their similarity to the normal cases.

This explains why we are sometimes able to image a

person being identical to their personal self after losing

their body OR psychological features

They are still formally tethered to their normal self

We can have just one or the other of the ordinary

features,



Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art

Ted Cohen “High and Low Thinking about High and Low Art”

According to Cohen, the distinction between art and non-art, high and low art

are alike in two respects:

o

They are not defensible philosophical distinctions They are honorific artistic contributions. (Museum art)

Child’s artwork is not normally seen as great art.

Not valued by society, or seen as an achievement on a

higher order.

o They are nevertheless indispensible distinctions

They should be honored and never be thrown away

Cohen does not give an account of how precisely the distinctions are employed.

o

Instead, his focus in the paper is to understand why they have a place in

our thinking about art and would-be art.

What is the high art/low art distinction?o It’s a distinction in quality.

Some art can be art without being good or meaningful

What is the art/non-art distinction

o It’s a distinction in kind

It can only be art if

Why do we need both distinctions

o

Its possible that the high/low distinction can render art/non-art

unnecessary or vice versa.

If paintings are high and pots are low, what difference does it

make whether both art art? If you think that Shakespeare is better

or deeper or nicer or something than The Simpsons, why do you

feel a need to say anything more than that? And if you do, why do

you feel a need to distinguish the kind of think Shakespeare is

from the kind of think The Simpsons is?” (152).

Both are useful distinctions for describing our intuitions on how to

categorize art.

To come up with his answer to this question, Cohen makes a comparison with his

thinking about moral categories and distinctions.

o Cohen’s illustration: He ought to visit Auschwitz.

Is there a moral theory behind his ought? For Cohen, there is not.

Ought” comes from a moral principle. Moral principles producedifferent kinds of verdicts.

“You are the one with the categories, the boxes, the petrifying

distinctions, and the dead sensibility: put my “ought” wherever

you like, and leave me alone” (152).



“Well, I know that anyone who asks questions about moral senses

of “ought” and different kinds of obligations, has lurking in his…”

(152)

o Why does he think

He thinks that there are plenty of oughts that people ought to do.

But they are not universal. But in his particular circumstance, heought to have gone.

Resembles an anti-theory view of ethics (moral

particularism)

o Principles are too crude to capture what is

important in real world situations involving real

people. There are too many significant features in a

situation. They will distort your view of right and

wrong

Cohen has a whole catalogue of “oughts”

o “I ought to refrain form telling children that I know how they feel and will

feel.”

o “I ought to share my money with others”

o (And so forth)

These are landmarks in his “moral landscape”

o We can use the landmarks to create moral categories (like territories on a

map): “the forbidden. The permitted, the obligatory, and the

supererogatory”

These are too crude to “do justice to the sensibility of my moral landscape.”

The categories of art and non-art, high and low art are like the categories of

moral theories: “they just blur and blotch” (153).

Cohen gives a list of the things that he likes:

o

The Simpsons and Northern Exposure; King Lear; some pieces by Mose

Allison and some by the Neville Brothers; Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago…” (and

so on)

He asks: Are all of these art?

o

He chooses not to answer the question.

o

But they are all important to him.o And it’s important to him that others appreciate them too.

The same art is not appreciated equally by everyone.

What you like and don’t like…

o Links you to other people who appreciate some of the same things, and…



o

Differentiates you aesthetically from other people.

Cohen gives another list of things he likes:

o Chocolate ice cream, Bob Marley’s song “buffalo soldiers,” the movie

Blues Brothers, and a photograph I once made of my son with his bicycle

Cohen thinks that these probably are not arto They don’t link him to others

o They don’t contribute to his aesthetic sensibility

Ex. A catchy commercial jingle,

We think that things are art or not based on how they link us to

other people via aesthetic sensibility.

What Cohen has given is not a theory of art.

o Cohen characterizes it as a “proto-conception of art” (155).

The core idea of his proto-conception: art is a “focus for a

mutuality that locates a community” (155). o It can help us understand why we have categories of art and non-art, high

and low art.

Illustration: listening to the deceased’s favorite music at a funeral vs. displaying

their favorite possessions.

o Music: Understanding his friend’s aesthetic sensibility

Art has an acknowledged trans-personal significance

o Possessions: doesn’t have a significance that connects us to other people.

Art is at least partly characterized by being the focus of a community

o This explains art/non-art, high/low art distinctions

We all belong to different sets of communities

Large

o The art is good, popular,

High art

Small

o In spite of the fact that it is good

Underappreciated high art

o

Not great art

Low art

We don’t all have a uniform taste

The high/low and art/non-art distinctions describe how we are located in

different kinds of aesthetic communities.

o

Our appreciate for a particular work of art locates us in..

A community that is large because the art is shallow

Low or popular art

A community that is large because the art is good



High art

A community that is small in spire of the fact that the art is good

Underappreciated high art

A community that is small because it is not great art

Low art

Eileen John “Artistic Value and Opportunistic Moralism”

Artwork can be good and have bad moral elements in them

Whether artwork needs to have a moral message or a moral purpose in order to

be good

John’s view: Opportunistic moralism

o

It is not the case that “the moral significance of works of artsystematically add to or detract from their value of art” (331).

o Nevertheless, we do tend to value art that conveys moral truths.

Thus, artists can convey moral messages opportunistically so that

people will value their art.

We tend to value art that conveys moral truths because

moral truths play a valuable role in our lives.

A work that rejects our morality can be considered great

Any art that plays an important role in our lives can

potentially find a role of acceptance into great art.

Some moralist views: Noel Caroll and Berys Gaut

o

Most moralists accept the following premise:

Assessment of moral value is relevant to assessment of the value

of a work of art

o Gaut: immorality always counts negatively against the value of a work

The response it prescribes is unmerited.

Huckleberry Finn

It makes us feel uncomfortable

Discomfort is what is really merited by the work

Immoral works are necessarily flawed in virtue of their moral

contento

Caroll: immoral contentment might contribute positively to the value of a

work, but it usually counts against it.

Moral content could contribute possibility for a value of a work,

but it is very rare



Artworks with moral flaws that contribute to their artistic value:

o Ernest Hemingway “ The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”

Treated as a coward for running away from a lion

Redeems himself by confronting a buffalo and dies

Changes his companion’s perception of him. They see him

as a hero. He earned his friends’ respect Grown-up and shown himself to be a man

o But she doesn’t believe that running away from a

lion is necessarily a cowardly act or that

confronting a buffalo is of moral courage.

o Henry James “The Portrait of a Lady”

Nightmare of a marriage. Marriage that is pervaded with deceit

and manipulation. She has opportunity to leave her marriage and

live a happier life, and doesn’t take it.

Her loyalty to her marriage is admirable

John doesn’t believe in the moral of the book. Her choice was toofoolish and too self-sacrificed to be worthy of admiration.

o Trainspotting

Self-consciously challenges your moral commitments

Successful because it gives us an unsettled response.

o

The Talented Mr.Ripley

Successful because it elicits this unsettling of our ordinary moral

judgments.

When is morally flawed content artistically valuable?

o

The work succeeds in getting you to understand the moral framework

that it presents.

o The work’s moral assessments are intelligible and compelling for the

audience in interpreting the events in the narrative.

If we were to do a detailed analysis, we would find them to have a

moral framework that is understandable and compelling, and

makes sense of the events in the narrative. The assessments

would be compelling even if the framework of moral assessments

that it is using isn’t one that we agree with.

336: the moral flaw in an excellent work will not seem…

How does John challenge the “mismatched response principle:” The principlethat responses that a work elicits, but that are not prescribed by the work, are

flaws of the work?

o

John finds this principle to be immediately suspect.

o Designed to produce a range of responses or a complicated and

restricted response, or no response at all.



o

Even if we accept the assumption that every work wi ith a moral

framework prescribes a moral response, it is not obvious that the

intended response has to be successfully ilicited in order to be successful.

o The important thing for a work’s success is that it gives us a compelling

and coherent moral picture.

o

We don’t have to agree with it or react in the same way o We must understand that pieces of the work that are supposed to be

morally

o Our emotions don’t have to “track” with the work’s moral assessments.

o We are supposed to try out the work’s assessment as we follow the

unfolding of events in the narrative.

If the work is successful, it will be a compelling source of spin, but

we may not agree with it.

Why according to John, shouldn’t we limit evaluations of art to evaluations on its

own terms?

They don’t have to elicit the emotional response that is

presented.

o Why is it also appropriate to evaluate a work of art’s general value as a

part of human life?

“In our practices of evaluating art, we have come to treat it as the

sort of thing that rightly aims for…further preciousness” than can

be ascribed within a limited evaluative framework (339).

It can still be a good work of art even if we don’t get the

response that was initially intended.

Why do we find art that agrees with our moral beliefs and sensibilities to be

more valuable?o According to John, it’s an opportunist thing. Moral values matter to us.

o But there is no necessary connection between morality and artistic merit.

A work that is successful on its own terms and demonstrates worth to human

values has more worth than an artwork that simply is successful on its own

terms.

Anne Eaton “Robust Immoralism”

Any character that makes us sympathize with a rough character is morallyflawed. (FALSE)

The Evil Queen,

Sympathy that we feel for these works of art is an achievement and it doesn’t

reveal anything about yourself as the audience.



David Hume on the rough hero :”We cannot prevail on ourselves to enter into

his sentiments, or bear and affection to characters, which we plainly discover to

be blamable”

Eaton’s view:

o

Immoralism: moral flaws can be artistic merits Contrasting from Hume, she claims that sometimes we do

sympathize with rough heroes.

When we do, it is an artistic achievement

How is art an object of moral assessment?

o Example: Goya’s Third of May painting

It is a historical event. Sanctions an attitude of disgust and

compassion for the victims

It asks us to deplore atrocities, and not sanction them.

A work’s “moral valence” comes from its perspective on its diegetic (whatever itdepicts/represents) elements.

o

Moral valence = its moral or immoral charge.

Is it moral or immoral?

o Diegetic elements = what it depicts or represents.

Moral valences: Does a work commend the right things and condemn the right

things?

o If it does, it has a positive (+) moral valence

Bad person is seen as bad

o If it doesn’t, it has a negative (-) moral valence (i.e. it’s immoral)

Bad person is seen as good

Examples of works with immoral characters:

o Uriah Heep from David Copperfield

Is portrayed as “clammy, slimy, and writhing” (282).

Giving the work a positive valance.

He was truly a bad person, therefore it is an artistic

achievement

o

Tony Soprano form the Sopranos

Is portrayed as “savvy, charismatic, bold, daring, and resolute”

(282).

Giving the work a negative valence. He is portrayed as a good person, but was actually a bad

person

Distinction:

o A moral judgment is extrinsic to a work

If it “is not a component of the work’s perspective” (282)

It is not a response that the work implies



It is not how it is telling us to respond

A separate moral response that the work does not

prescribe

Make a judgment that is external to the work.

o

A moral judgment is intrinsic to a work

If it “is a component of the work’s perspective” (283)

It is a response that the work prescribes

Depiction is supposed to prompt moral outrage

It comes from the actual features of the object

The work it meant to sanction moral disapproval

Moral flaws are aesthetic virtues when the work prescribes an immoral

response, sometimes but not necessarily in cases where the work doesn’t

prescribe

Lolita is supposed to be good because it is supposed to draw both disgust and

sympathy for a pedophile.

How are rough heroes different from antiheros?

o Antiheros are flawed, but they are not outrageously bad people.

o

Rough heroes are egregiously bad people.

Rough hero flaws are not peripheral characteristics, they are

characteristics of their personality.

Rough Hero Archetypes:

o

Admirable devil

o

Glorified criminal

o

Congenial murderer

o

Likeable sex criminalo Sympathetic sadist

o Appealing mean-spirited person

o And others..

They are acknowledged to be profoundly flawed, if not downright

evil.

Rough hero’s flaws create “imaginative resistance” that the works attempt to

overcome.

o You like them, but you realize that they are terrible/evil people

o

Overcome your dislike,

o

Supposed to maintain a delicate tension between like and dislike of thecharacter

Common devices used to overcome imaginative resistance:

o

Humanize them

o

Idealize them

o Contrast them with worse characters

o Give them a “quasi-moral code”



A code of honor; a code of says you never harm a certain type of

person

o

Make the good characters fools

Good characters are misguided

Why do proponents of the moralist view of art think that immoral content is an

aesthetic flaw?o The responses that you have for the works and that the work sanctions

are not warranted

Does this argument equivocate, conflating two kinds of warrant?

o

A response can be warranted in the sense that it fits its object

Or

o A response can be warranted in the sense that “it would be the right

response to have for reasons unrelated to whether the object possesses

features picked out by that response” (286).

The right response to have for moral reasons

The moralistic fallacy a faulty influe from the claim to have a response that does

not fit that object.

o A work can warrant a response that have characteristics to cause a

response,

A moralist response:

o Your moral response to a work fits the work’s features too, just as the

immoral response does.

o

And your moral response makes it impossible for you to appreciate the

immoral aesthetic features of the work.

Eaton’s rejoinder:

o

An argument from analogy:

Moral flaws are like the stench of a painting made from putrid

materials

o They might detract form our enjoyment of the work, but for anyone

capable of suppressing their olfactory/moral reaction, the aesthetically

good features of the work would be undiminished.

Rough hero works are designed to overcome the stench/negative

reaction to immoral content.

A further moralist response:o Moral flaws in a person (or character in an artwork) warrant antipathy,

not sympathy.

o Thus, rough hero works don’t warrant what they prescribe

Eaton’s rejoinder:

o Rough hero works successfully elicit sympathy.



Why does Eaton think that the creation of a rough hero is an aesthetic

achievement?

o

“The rough hero type sets up and then skillfully solves an ambitious and artistically interesting problem: namely, to overcome the audience’s

imaginative resistance” (287).

Giving them a sense of goodness.

There must be a sense of balance between good and bad.

They must seem bad/good, but not too good/bad

o “This state of dividing-ourselves-against-ourselves that such works induce

in their audience is aesthetically valuable” (287).

We are compelled by rough hero characters because we feel

mixed emotions for them.

It makes these works haunt us and keep us awake at night To be compelling is to be an aesthetic achievement. It sticks with

you.

For it to be an aesthetic achievement:

Must set up a worthwhile problem, and solve it well

Moral flaws are valued if they are set up in a way that

makes it compelling

“The very same feature of a work is both a blemish and

moral good?””

The recent spike of rough hero characters might detract from the

aesthetic value of the works

Because the problem might be less compelling if it has

been done so many times before

We might find the systems too predictable and too

formulaic.

o But if it is interesting, it is aesthetically notorious

phil 1013 unit 2 notes

Documents