What follows is a list of discussions, or thoughts, or meaningless intellectual exercises with which I have lately been preoccupied, and of which I hope to set down lengthier treatments in the near future. (What an enormous cop-out! OF COURSE I will write more!)
Philosophy vs. psychology
(Some) psychologists like to believe that the psychological/neurological/pharmacological approach to human behaviour is all that there is. [Of course (some) philosophers believe the opposite.] That “philosophy” is merely a reflection of the psychological state of affairs, but that our psychology is such as to create the philosophies we choose to “believe” in. [See Hume on inference]
But if I make choices, even based entirely (or almost entirely) upon my psychology, physiology, experience and situation, I still can reflect on those choices (and do). The purely psychological picture does not allow for reflection, unless it treats reflection as simply another psychological state. But to do so is to put the cart before the horse, because that determination itself (that it’s all psychology) is as open to the same charge as is applied to philosophizing. It’s a choice. And even if it is a choice entirely explained by psychological arguments, it is beyond our knowing, inasmuch as knowing such a thing requires some kind of self-reflection and self-consciousness.
We live in a philosophical world, even if many of the furnishings are supplied by our psychology. This is merely to say that philosophizing is an essential part of our psychology, even if it can’t answer all our questions, or rise above the highly determinate world our psychology makes for us. All that is required is that philosophers acknowledge the role of psychology as on par with metaphysics—and crucially, as a modern lexicon for addressing epistemological and ethical questions.
Fear and choice
The survival instinct is the starting point for all our decision making. Long after we’ve stopped thinking in concrete survival terms, we continue to make decisions influenced by an unconscious drive to “survive” and prosper. As Charles Prather once remarked to me, the brain isn’t “designed” for thinking, but rather for “surviving”, and sometimes that primary function gets in the way of effective thinking. Politics in the broadest sense, meaning national electoral politics, down to municipal, down to institutional and organizational politics, has become (perhaps always was) driven by fear and opportunism. The problem with democracy, in some respects, is that it only appears to be “free”. The goal of many politicians seems to be to constrain that freedom by instilling fear—directly or indirectly, abstract or concrete. When individuals fear, their survival instinct kicks into action in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, resulting in decision options being badly evaluated, prioritized, misunderstood or rejected out of hand. This is a problem, since we are living through the age of fear, and we can’t seem to make good decisions… even when our lives depend upon it.
Not “values voters”; “fear voters”
By extension, one of the ways to combat the “values voter” paradigm is to target this group as “fear voters”, who irrationally vote against their own best interests based on the (misplaced) fear that everything they cherish is threatened. After all, what are the “values” that they want protected? Freedom of choice? Individual liberty? Quality of life? Religious meaning?
Abortion: when is a fetus “alive”, by analogy, when is a robot “sentient”?
The essence of the argument against abortion is that it is murder by another name. This is so because the fetus is considered a living human being from the moment of conception. Or, for many, because it is impossible to know at exactly what moment the fetus is “human”. One way of attacking this problem is to get to the fundamental problem of the sanctity of life—why is (should be?) human life sacred, and why should a fetus be accorded a different level of “sanctity” from, say, innocent non-combatants killed in “just” wars? (The key, after all, appears to be that fetuses are the quintessence of “innocence”. Though it begs the question why some are miscarried.) The problem is that there is no obvious way to come to agreement on this, and most appeals are tied to rigid, unyielding belief in God, or the lack thereof.
Another way of looking at it is to see it (the question of abortion) as a management issue, not an ethical one. Abortions will occur regardless of what the law is. They will be immoral or not regardless of whether they occur. But from a management perspective, understanding when to apply the term “living” is analogous to when a computer or robot can be said to be “intelligent” as it is being constructed. Very much a sophisticated Sorites paradox… when is it merely a collection of inert pieces of metal and chips, and when is it something that can think?
The Underrated: a “hall of fame” of artists, art and music that have been overlooked
I have a very long list, which I have never bothered to set down, of things I have had enormous appreciation for, but which seem to have never been accorded the fame or respect I think they clearly deserve. Now seems like a good time to start.
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