Beacon Hill

Moving Day

2007-05-04T23:32:57Z

Hello all,

I shall no longer be maintaining my Philosophy blog at this address. Instead, I have moved to: http://thebeaconhill.blogspot.com, and it is there that you will find my philosophical ruminations.

I will also let you know that I now also have a blog exclusively devoted to Canadian politics, and that can be found here: http://philosophical-liberal.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you over at my new home.

(For those LiveJournal readers I may still have, I should also let you know I will continue to maintain my personal journal, <lj user="enigma00">.

Philosophical Investigations

2007-03-28T04:52:48Z

Recently I have been re-reading the first 55 or so sections of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Each of the first three times, that was as far as I got, because I felt I hadn't really understood what he was saying. This fourth time, something "clicked", and I could start to see the picture he is painting. It's certainly the case that much work in philosophy requires multiple readings, but I think that what also helped were developments and thoughts of my own, as well as a greater understanding of Wittgenstein and his work through secondary materials.

In any case, reading the Investigations always does two things for me; i) impresses me, even if I don't really know exactly what he's talking about, and ii) excites me greatly, stimulating my thoughts and filling my mind with questions, ideas, and interpretations. Whether you agree with it or not, PI is something for all philosophers (or budding philosophers) to read, for those two reasons. Even if it doesn't impress you, it should stimulate you to think. And this, based on what he says in the book's preface, is what Wittgenstein wanted most.

One thing that stands out for me everytime I read the beginning of PI is what he has to say about the standard metre in Paris. Due to it's role in the language-game of measuring, he says, the standard metre in Paris is one thing of which we can say that it is neither one metre long nor not one metre long. That is, we cannot say of it that M v ~M, where M is "one metre in length". This seems to defy the "Law of Excluded Middle", though admittedly I am not as familiar with this "law" as I should be and perhaps it has long since been shown useless.

Nonetheless, the assertion is an interesting one. Kripke takes it up in the first lecture of Naming and Necessity, but although I've read Kripke's rebuttal of Wittgenstein's argument, I have to confess I didn't really understand it. I shall have to go back and re-read it. My suspicion is that Kripke missed the point entirely, but of course I shouldn't judge before I've carefully considered the matter.

In any case, Philosophical Investigations continues to stimulate me to thought.

Anti-Terror Concerns

2007-02-28T02:01:19Z

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/27/terror-vote.html?ref=rss

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=e516837d-cf49-486b-a762-883f0c4e8d01&k=25150

Today the House of Commons voted against extending two provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, one allowing police to arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for 72 hours without charges (provided they believe a terrorist act may be committed, and that they justify the suspect's detention infront of a judge within 24 hours), and the other allowing judges to compel witnesses to testify in secret about past terrorist associations or acts to come. Only the minority Conservative government and one Liberal MP voted to extend the provisions.

These measures have never been used, and were only up for review now because of a sunset clause placed on them back when they were first put into place following September 11th.

The Liberal rationale for voting against the measures was that they were never used, and thus useless, and that if they were ever to be used, they would violate people's liberty unjustly. Apparently the Liberal party was actually quite divided on the issue, but only one MP chose to vote against his party; one also abstained. Other Liberal MPs who were against their party's position did not attend the vote.

A a member of the Liberal Party myself, I was concerned from the outset at the stance M. Dion was taking on this issue. It doesn't make sense to me to be against extending the measures. Had the measures been used and abused, it would indeed make sense to be opposed to their renewal. However, the fact that the measures have not been used doesn't make them useless - it just means that there has not yet been an occasion on which they were needed.

Some members of the party asserted that the measures unjustly infringed upon liberty and human rights. While indeed they do infringe upon liberty, I'm not sure that the do so unjustly. I believe they strike a balance between liberty and safety, that while precarious, may be a lesser evil we must endure. In contrast to measures taken in the United States (which are much harsher), the 72 hour detention of suspects without warrant must be justified in front of a judge within 24 hours of the arrest - something that would prevent arrests that did not come from a credible threat, as if the police knew they would not be able to justify holding the person, they would not do so. We may not like that such a measure could be taken, but if it saves lives, and is also is placed under stringent guidlines and controls so as to prevent mis-use, I believe that such measures may be neccesary to prevent terrorist attacks. The same is true of the second measure. With the proper checks and balances, and a strengthening of our democratic institutions, such lesser evils can be offset and protected from abuse.

All this talk of lesser evils actually comes from a book by Michael Ignatieff, now deputy leader of the Liberal Party. I believe (though I do not know, obviously), that he personally supported these measures (in accord with what he wrote in his book), but that he couldn't openly oppose them due to his position in the party. However, before the vote today, he said that all parties should "work constructively to improve Canada’s anti-terrorism laws" - I know that he means this, and while his own party did not go along with two measures that I believe he probably supported, I continue to hope that with his continued prescence in the work being done to improve such laws, we will be able to strike a sensible balance between liberty and security. This balance will obviously not be the same as the two measures defeated today, but will hopefully be one that will protect us, our liberty, and have the support of all the major parties. And who knows? I could be wrong, and there could be a solution that provides the same security as the two measures defeated today while doing less harm to rights and liberty.

Time and hard work will give us the answer, but Liberals must remember that we cannot get complacent about terrorism, nor can we become fear-mongers and sacrificers of liberty. There is a balance to be struck, but it is vital we do not end up too far into complacency or ignorance when what we need is pragmatic solutions that preserve our freedom while protecting Canadian lives.

Addendum: I should note, as well, that the Anti-Terrorism Act held up under Supreme Court scrutiny, and was not found by the Court to contravene the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Naming and Necessity

2007-01-28T07:52:45Z

Reading this book gives me the strange sensation of being both intruiged, perplexed, and skeptical all at the same time. The ideas are exciting and fascinating, but just as part of me is saying "Wow, this is a very interesting way of looking at these problems", the other part is saying "He's so close, yet so far away."

And I'm only 57 pages in.

Certainly digesting this book will take some time, some thinking, a re-read or two, some more thinking, and then an attempt at wading through all the scholarship since it was first published.

Then more thinking.

But such is the nature of doing philosophy. It's really just reading and thinking. And perhaps there is some talking involved now and again.

Reading List

2007-01-28T07:47:01Z

Thought it might be interesting to put up a list of books I am currently reading, and am planning to read.

Current

Naming and Necessity - Saul A. Kripke
The Lesser Evil - Michael Ignatieff

Planned

On Truth - Harry G. Frankfurt
The Reasons of Love - Harry G. Frankfurt
Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting it Right - Harry G. Frankfurt
Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard
Three Essays on Religion - John Stuart Mill
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Philosophical Investigations - Ludwig Wittgenstein

A Quick Meta-Ethical Question

2007-01-06T07:16:59Z

I'm unsure about the status of ethical claims. I want to say that like all philosophical statements (under my view), ethical statements do not have a truth-value. For example, when applying an ethical value to a fact, like "Bob killed Joe", what does what we say about this mean? I think that saying that this act is morally bad is not saying that the sentence "Bob killing Joe is morally bad" is true, but rather that the fact that Bob killed Joe has a moral interpretation, and that the correct interpretation is a negative one - it's not fact because we can't go out in the world and discover it. But still, part of me wants to reject this and say that it's a moral truth that killing Joe was wron. But this doesn't seem to jive with the rest of my thoughts on philosophical statements, nor my thoughts on ethics (that certain ethical prescriptions and values are due to facts in the world but are not themselves facts).

It seems easier to decide the truth value of a statement like "You ought to drink eight glasses of water a day", as that is a statement that is neither true nor false. It is true that it is good for you to drink eight glasses of water a day, but that doesn't mean that "you ought to drink eight glasses of water a day" is true, or even has a truth value at all.

At least, that's the way it seems to me.

News

2006-10-14T07:18:47Z

I have recently decided (for various reasons, which I shall not go into) to change my major and career goal from Anthropology to Philosophy.

My emphasis of late has tended to be on more theoretical questions rather than practical problems anyway, and I find myself talking and thinking about philosophy moreso than I do any other subject. So there it is.

The focus of this blog will not change much (it is already fairly philosophy-centric), and anthropology and archaeology will remain in my interests, but philosophy shall be my main endeavour.

Philosophy and Truth

2006-09-30T07:58:18Z

I cannot believe how often I read people taking the position that philosophy is the search for truth.

No. Philosophy has very little to do with truth. Truth is the domain of science; it is understanding and meaning that philosophy deals in. Science does have to have philosophy backing it up - there has to be an answer to the epistemological question "What is it to know something?", and the ontological question "What things exist?", for example.

Now, the first question has been answered many ways; but I don't think it's the kind of question where the answer is a truth. The traditional way has defined knowledge as "justified belief that is true" (there are some problems with this that we're all familiar with, but I'll leave that alone for now); but this definition is not an "epistemological truth"; it's a conceptual analysis of what it means to say "knowledge". No truth has been found here, only meaning.

As for "What things exist?", I think it's a nonsensical question, anyway. For when one says "things", one means that which exists; so you haven't really said anything when you ask the question.*

So science certainly has to be backed up by philosophy, but that doesn't mean that philosophy finds truth; philosophy talks about what the truth means. It's the difference between asking "What makes people feel bad?" (empirical question to be answered using the empirical methods of science) and "What is it to feel bad?" (conceptual question to be answered using the logical methods of philosophy).

I may have more to say on this topic at a later date.

*One should not get confused with this and more specific ontological questions regarding the existence of a certain thing. The question "What things exist?" is nonsensical, but the question "Do atoms really exist?" is not. There is a difference between asking "What things exist?" - which is silly, because all things that exist, exist - and "Does x exist?", which is a specific proposition that is able to be verified. But this question ("Does x exist?") is an empirical question, and thus has to be answered by science; philosophy is silent.

An Overview of My Interests - Updated

2006-09-04T09:12:51Z

In this post back in May, I posted an overview of my current interests. Since they have changed a little in the months since, I feel I should update this list. I will do so in a fairly haphazard manner, as they come to me:

- Paleolithic archaeology of europe
- The emergence and early stages of symbolic and religious behaviour
- Religion as a natural and cultural phenomenon
- Anthropology and archaeology of religious belief
- Epistemology of religious belief
- How religion affects the view of the self
- Anthropology of present-day Christian groups
- Anthropological and archaeological philosophy, method and theory
- Critiquing post-modernist influence in anthropology and re-defining how archaeology fits into the framework of anthropology as a whole
- Reconciling the interpretationalist and materialist views of culture

Aside from these specific topics, I'm also interested generally, in the following:

- Ethics
- Metaphysics
- Philosophy of Mind
- Social and Political Philosophy

Aphorisms and Maxims - Part One

2006-09-01T06:37:24Z

21 July 2006

1

A man, though he wishes is not, is ruled by more than a hundred thousand years of natural selection. Thus, his genes call out a cry of resistance at the prospect of strict monogamy. In this, mind and culture must prevail over genes.

2

Were an alien race to land on earth tomorrow, I suspect that we would discover they either have had or are having the same problems as us mere earthlings.

3

It is wrong to see genes (and memes) as actually behaving selfishly. The selfish gene (and meme) perspective is just that; a perspective, a way of looking at and interpreting the “actions” of genes and memes in a way that makes sense of other related phenomena.

4

In terms of morality, it seems that the intent and consequences of an action are both important. The ideal situation is one of good intentions and positive consequences; but if one is to be lacking, which ought to be? As morality is our tool to promote human flourishing, it is the consequences of an act that are more important; for it is the actual outcome of an event that has the greatest ability to promote – or prevent – flourishing.

27 July 2006

5

Let us distinguish between two types of cultural relativism – one useful, one absurd. First, the useful: methodological relativism, applied by anthropologists in studying a culture. The absurd: moral culture relativism, stating that all morality is culturally based and thus there are no universal moral truths.

10 August 2006

6

We can all learn from Icarus.

7

I feel at home in the water – like I have returned from whence I came. Which is no surprise – it is part of me, part of us all. We came from the water and we are sustained by it; it gave us life and continues to do so.

Wise Words from Great Men

2006-07-21T07:22:41Z

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it."

- John Stuart Mill, in a letter to the Conservative MP Sir John Pakington. March, 1866.

It pretty much just speaks for itself, doesn't it?.

Also, this list of quote from John F. Kennedy really makes clear the sharp downward turn that the United States has taken. I can't help but be inspired by the words on that page, and I find myself nodding in agreement (and noticing how closely he holds to the values of liberal democracy). Compare those words with the words spoken in recent times by President Bush, and the political decay of the United States is plain for everyone of reason to see.

Despite whatever faults he may have had, John Kennedy was a brilliant man.

A Question of Ethics

2006-07-13T06:35:58Z

I have always been drawn to moral consequentialism, mainly due to my reading of Mill's Utilitarianism. Now, while I don't consider myself a full-on Utilitarian, Mill's theory has far more sway with me than does the other big name in normative ethics - Kant. Though a deontological system of ethics is an interesting proposition, I don't believe that the intent of the act is what matters. Since morality is what we use to promote human flourishing, I think that it is the consequences of our actions that matter more than our intent - we can have pure intentions, but if the consequences are negative I don't think that we have done anything to promote flourishing.

However, I have also been drawing to Virtue ethics. Though my only exposure to this ethical theory has been through Aristotle, I think that it is an extremely interesting proposition worth exploring. Recently, through an online forum, I was emailed a paper - written by a fellow university student - entitled "Virtue-Utilitarianism", an attempt to unify consequentialism and virtue-based morality. I have not yet read it, but it may yeild promise. He seems to be proposing that we should be cultivating the right sort of character such that the most personal and social happiness obtains. A noble pursuit, indeed, and one that immediately intruiges me, but I have my doubts.

For example, it will be neccesary to reconcile certain things. In virtue ethics (at least, the Aristotilean formulation), the goal is for each person to find his or her "golden mean", the point at which you are excelling in all of your own unique personal characterstics. For this to be made useful in a consequentialist system, it would have to be shown that acting in such a way as to further the attainment of your "golden mean" does not lead to negative consequences for others. And would we still be talking about a Utilitarianism that advocates "the greatest happiness (in the Millian sense) for the greatest number"? Or would we instead move to promoting "the greatest virtue for the greatest number" (whatever that means)?

Interesting questions; I shall have to peruse the paper and ponder this further.

Nietzsche

2006-07-06T04:27:01Z

I like Nietzsche. He can be a bit of a blowhard, he has some ideas I don't agree with, he hated women, and sometimes there are things he says that don't make sense. But I still like his writing, and I think what he has contributed to Western Philosophy is important, and should not be overlooked. He is somewhat widely read by laypeople and non-Philosophers, sometimes misunderstood by the uneducated (and by misfortunes of the past) as a Nazi, but for the most part he is only recently starting to be taken seriously by analytic philosophers; heretofore he has only been given credit by continental philosophers and post-modernists, in what I believe is a slight misinterpretation of much of his work. I was pleased to see several quotes from him in a couple of books by Daniel Dennett, who seems to take what he has to say seriously. Simon Blackburn's devotes a whole chapter of Truth to Nietzsche, but it is hard to tell if he is praising or slighting him. But at least some analytic philosophers are mentioning him.

It is largely thanks to Kaufmann, I would imagine, that Nietzsche is taken more seriously in the world of philosophy than he might otherwise be. The thing about him that perhaps puts many people off is his different style - he did not write like Kant, or Hume, or Mill. Certainly his style was not in any way superior to the aforementioned (neither was theirs superior to his), simply different. In reading Nietzsche one has to take into account that perhaps not all that is being read is exactly what he thought, or that everything is all part of one coherent system. He is prone to what seem like contradictions, or saying things which seem outrageous to even the most radical of thinkiers, but I am of the opinion that both of these are there to make us think about the issue from a different angle; to shake off our preconceptions.

I mentioned that he is prone to misinterpretion, and briefly I will outline just one that has been of interest to me. In Beyond Good and Evil, he writes, "There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena..." (A108). It is easy to jump on this statement and claim Nietzsche was a moral relativisit; perhaps this is what some post-modernists do. But is far more clear to me that Nietzsche is saying that there is no thing that is morality, no tangible, real moral facts - they just don't exist. You can't look under a rock and find it - "Hey, look, I found morality!". But, obviously morality does exist in some sense - but in what sense? I think he is pointing out that since there is no thing that is morality, there is only the morality that people create. Many who read this may still be protesting that this does indeed qualify his as a relativist - but it doesn't. Notice he says nothing about every interpretation being equally valuable in some way - only that phenomena are to be interpreted morally instead of being thought to be intrinsically moral. It is certainly the case that one interpretation could be the correct one - and in fact I believe that to be the case. Nietzsche does not say this, but this aphorism does not show him as a moral relativist.

If everyone on the planet disappeared tommorow, so too would morality - morality is something we create to enable humanity to flourish, but that doesn't mean there is no right way to do things.

Many philosophers may dismiss Nietzsche, but I think his work is worth knowing. Like any philosopher, he made mistakes and has ideas that really don't fly; but there is, I think, many nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned by perusing his writing.

Truth and Science

2006-05-26T08:22:13Z

The scientific method is not “Western” and not bound to a certain culture, if done correctly.

I wish the post-modernists, or deconstructivists, or relativists, or whatever these people decide to call themselves would stop and think for a second and realise that science is not an activity bound by society or culture, and that the discovery of the way the world is would go the same way no matter who is doing it, when it is done right. The fact that some scientists (and social scientists) are biased in their interpretation of the data because of one reason or another is not the fault of the scientific method, it is the fault of the researcher for not realising the fact.

Any person on this earth, thinking rationally and with the available evidence, should be able to discover the underlying principles of evolution, gravity, motion, etc. Where they are from and what their cultural backround is is irrelevant.

If I hear one more post-modernist tell me that "there is no real truth; and all that masquerades as truth is historically situated", I am going to lose it. To think that our cultural biases are inescapable is to completely deny any notion of objectivity that we are clearly capable of.

I don't know alot yet about epistemology, but I do know that you can't be thinking clearly and agree that the above statement is the reason why science or any objective study is fruitless.

An Overview of My Interests.

2006-05-04T07:53:28Z

I just wanted to point out some of my main areas of interest in my chosen fields, perhaps to give myself and any readers I might have a sense of where I think I may be headed in the future.

Within Anthropology and Archaeology

- Paleolithic Archaeology of Europe (especially France)
- The emergence and early stages of symbolic and religious behaviour
- Religion as a natural and cultural phenomenon
- How religion affects the understanding of the self and the self's relation to other selves and the world at large
- Archaeological Method and Theory
- Critiquing Post-Processualism
- Improving the methods and theoretical underpinnings of Processual Archaeology
- Incorporating memes into Processual theory about culture change

Within Philosophy

- Epistemology
- Philosophy of Religion
- Metaphysics
- Philosophy of Mind
- Critiquing post-modernist philosophy

Seals

2006-04-04T06:55:44Z

I'm sorry about my earlier outburst on my other journal.

I realise what I have to say here will be controversial to some, but that's the way it goes.

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/seal-phoque/myth_e.htm

and

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/media/statem/2005/20050317_e.htm

Those pretty much say it, especially the second one. As much as the environmental/animal rights groups/celebrities want to protest it, most of the "facts" they are using are either out of date, not relevant, or not true. On every anti-hunt site that I visited, not a single piece of data is referenced, whereas on the above website it is.

Now, as that website is directly from the Canadian government, of course we can expect some bias. However, looking at the issue fairly, a few things emerge.

1) The seal population is very large and not in danger whatsoever
2) The hunt is a major source of income for families that have NO OTHER INCOME at that time of the year

Now, several bad things do in fact happen. One, in many years the hunters have killed more seals than they were allowed to, and the government didn't do anything about it. This is a big problem, in my view, as the number they are allowed to kill is strictly controlled and should not be ignored. Also, whever things like this take place there are always those who don't follow the rules. The solution to both problems is to more strictly enforce the rules set up.

Basically, the main argument being used (as far as I can see it, anyway) is that "it's terrible to kill little baby seals!", which really isn't an argument so much as an appeal to emotion. I've read all the other arguments (it isn't economically important, the seal population is in danger, etc) but given what really goes on, the "the practice is disgusting" defence is all they really have. And as I said, you can say it all you want, but it's not advancing the argument anymore than "Abortion is a grotesque killing of babies!" is.

What it comes down to for me is that the seal hunt is important to the families that take part in it, and without it they would be in worse shape than they already are; it's not like the fishing industry there makes them rich either, and during this time of year there is no fishing industry. If there were another way for them to make money, then great, I would prefer that, but in this case, the seal hunt is important and since it is strictly controlled to not endanger the population, it's something that in my mind has to take place.

What solutions do those against the hunt have for those families involved? Would they rather them not have enough money to get through the year?

Killing baby seals isn't exactly my idea of a fun day's work, but I would much rather have a baby seal die by clubbing than a baby human die of starvation.

I can see the issue here, but I'm afraid it's no different from most animals rights issues - who has more rights, the human animal, or the rest of the animals on the earth? We have to draw a line at some point, and thus far I can't see the line going any farther than ourselves and the rest of the great apes. After that it's just a matter of conservation and respect for the working of the environment while still being able to extract what we need to survive. In a perfect world this wouldn't be part of that extraction, but this isn't a perfect world. And the question of whether we have the "right" to impose ourselves so heavily (or even at all) onto the natural world is a very, very big question, and one which I do not have the time, space, or experience to answer. When you think about it, there are so many overwhelming things to consider that the simple notion "we do not have the right to impose ourselves on the natural world" is not an assertion that can be made without being open for intense scrutiny.

But at some point, we do have to focus ourselves on the here and now; we need to be pragmatic.

If this practice could be curtailed in the future in favour of some other practice, I would be in support. But as it stands, this needs to happen if it is done in a responsible way.

I don't like dead baby seals more than any other person, but I can certainly see the reason why they do it. It may not be perfect, but it seems neccesary. For now.

Abortion

2006-03-31T19:54:06Z

Recently, the Campus Pro-Life (CPL) club here at the U of C put on a two-day "demonstration" which they call their "Genocide Awareness Project". Now, they are claiming that abortion can be compared to various kinds of genocide, for example, the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, and the recent genocide in Rwanda. Besides the fact that these statements (and the pictures to go along with them) are nothing more than attention-whoring Appeals to Emotion and do nothing to further their argument, they do actually have a reason for their fallacious comparisons.

They say that the cases of genocide mentioned happened when the notion of Human Being was divorced from the notion of Person, and thus since a certain group was deemed not worthy of personhood, it was okay to kill them.

Now, whether or not this is actually the case in regards to both Nazi persecution of Jews (it probably is) and the Rwandan genocide (I don't know), it seems they are trying to gain a certain level of credibility by making an argument that actually seems to have premisses which make sense. However, after debating with a couple of the members of the group for the better part of an hour on Monday, I realised that their argument is a) faulty, and b) missing the point.

Of Personhood (The Faulty Argument)

Firstly, their claim is that Personhood should not be divorced from the concept of being Human. Well, I decided to ask them exactly what this meant, and their answer was simply "DNA". They claim that as soon as something has unique human DNA, it should be considered a person, and thus a two-celled embryo should be afforded the same rights as you and I.

Now, I see a problem with this kind of strict biological reductionism. I do not think that simply having human DNA captures the notion of Personhood, nor does it allow for other creatures to be allowed the status of Person (chimpanzees, for example). The fact that hundreds of philosophers for hundreds have years have been wrestling with the concept of Personhood and still haven't come to a real consensus seems lost on these Pro-Lifers. However, just because they aren't philosophers doesn't make their claim faulty in and of itself, but perhaps their claim is a little bit presumptuous when there are people much more highly trained in intellectual endeavours who have far different concepts of Personhood.

Now, I voiced my problem with their biological reduction to the person I was debating. I said, well, if it is simply human DNA, what if I were to inject a bacterial cell with human DNA; would I then have to afford it the status of a Person, with as many rights as you and I? No, she said, and then she amended her argument to including "the possibility of growing into a human".

Wait a minute! Didn't she just say that something is both human and a person when it has human DNA? So why is "growing into a human" neccesary when it already is a human, according to her argument?

And now we start to see the problems. Affording two cells the same rights as you and I should (hopefully) seem odd to most people, and simply saying that if it has unique human DNA it is a person doesn't seems to get them into a trap. Not to mention the fact that it excludes other things from being Persons, like Chimpanzees, with whom we share 98.6% of our DNA and who at adult-hood have greater cognitive abilities than do most 3 year olds. So what is it about our 1.4% DNA difference, I ask these "pro-lifers", that makes us worthy of Personhood and Chimpanzees not? Chimpanzees and ourselves diverged from a common ancestor 5-7 million years ago, and in that time we have gained that 1.4% of genetic change through natural selection and evolution - so can we really hold that the random processes of natural selection are responsible for according human beings - and ONLY human beings - Personhood? No, we can't, because natural selection is a random, algorhythmic process that shapes our DNA. So to judge personhood by our randomly arrived at DNA alone seems to be quite arbitrary and subjective.

Having human DNA may be criteria for being a member of Homo sapiens, but it is not the sole criteria by which we should judge Personhood.

On Rights (Why CPL Misses the Point)

I have already shown that their argument regarding Personhood is not cogent, and now I will seek to demontrate that they are missing the point entirely.

I think what the question of abortion comes down to is rights. Who has more rights, a mother, or a foetus? Do they have equal rights? Let's examine this.

A foetus is, while inside the womb, attached to the mother and cannot survive without her. It is part of her body. What it comes down to, ultimately, is that a woman has rights, and she has rights over her own body which no one is allowed to circumvent. The foetus, as part of her body, pertains to this also. It is a women's right to choose what she does with her body.

If we say that it is immoral for her to have an abortion, we are saying that the foetus has more rights than the mother does - how can that be? The foetus is PART of the mother, and while inside her body the mother has complete domain over it, just as she has complete domain over her arms, liver, brain, etc.

Does a woman have a right to cut off her arm, if she wants? Yes, she does, though this seems non-sensical. In the same way, though, the woman has the right to an abortion. There is simply no case in which we should afford the foetus more rights than the mother.

Nor can we afford it equal rights - as part of the woman's body. she has control over it, and her rights supercede the foetus'.

The response that I was given to this was, Well, a two-year old is completely dependant on its mother for survival, does the mother have the right to kill it, as well? No, she doesn't, because at that point it is not part of her body, and she no longer has domain over it. It's really that simple.

Now, there are some issues left with this, but to me there are not so much moral as they are unpleasant.

Firstly, it is quite obvious that people should not be having abortions for the hell of it, nor should they use it as a form of birth control. But this is why education is needed, and why it is important for people to realise the consequences of unprotected sex.

Secondly, where I live it is legal for a woman to have an abortion anytime before the birth occurs. This does in fact accord with what I have said above (in terms of the woman having domain over the foetus while it is inside her body), but many people (myself included) are disturbed by the process in which late-term abortions are carried out. Now, many pro-lifers use a description of this process as a means of proving their point. Again, this is nothing but an Appeal to Emotion (an informal fallacy) that doesn't do anything to further their argument. However, there is a point to be made.

Obviously this kind of thing should be avoided if at all possible. Why on earth someone would leave it so late in the term to get an abortion is beyond me, and again, this is where education and available help is needed to deal with unwanted pregnancies in a timely fashion. Though I cannot, in principle, morally disagree with late-term abortions, I think it is something which is best avoided for the sake of everyone involved. It is not morally wrong, but it is certainly not something which needs to take place, especially when pregnancies can be ended much sooner in the process.

In this case, however, it is not justified to encroach on women's rights in order to prevent something which is unpleasant. It is better to educate and to prevent than to restrict women's rights outright.

It is obvious that this is a topic of great debate, though abortion does remain legal in most Western countries. It is important to realise, also, the consequences of banning abortion. "Pro-Lifers", would wish this, but in fact, I refuse to refer to them as such. I would much rather refer to them as "Anti-Abortionists", because in the cases where abortion is banned, there suddenly becomes a high number of women who die from botched back-room abortions. This is not "pro-life" in any sense, especially since those women are dying by excersizing their personal rights to domain over their body, something which is also violated in cases of rape, where the offence would become double - A violation of rights over her own body in being raped, and a violation of rights over her own body in being denied an abortion.

There is nothing wrong with holding anti-abortion views, and there is nothing wrong with demonstrating said views - those are both rights guranteed by free speech. However, it is also my right to criticise them and point out the flaws in their argument. There is nothing wrong with holding a view which is incorrect, but there is everything wrong with such ridiculous comparisons of abortion to the Holocaust and to the Rwandan genocide - especially when their entire argument misses the point.

____________

Please feel free to comment and tell me what you think.

The Creation of Meaning - An Introduction

2006-02-28T22:06:30Z

One of the 'big' questions that the average person is likely to think about at some point or another (perhaps not in as much detail as I am about to give) is the nature of Truth. Is there an objectively real reality, or is it all in my head? And if there is an objective reality, can I discover anything about it, or even EVERYTHING about it? Or are we relegated to coming 'as close as we can' to it? I shall come back to this kind of Truth (that is, Truth about reality) in a later discussion. For today I'm going to concentrate on something else - Ethical and Moral Truth.

Perhaps the kind of Truth that most non-philosophers think about most often is ethical and moral truth. If I think abortion is morally permissable in some cases, but you think it is morally absurd in every case, is that okay? That is to say, is it perfectly alright for us to each have our own differing views, but regard each view as somehow intrinsically worth something?

These are a lot of questions, but few people actually take the time to answer them for themselves. Most just move on with their lives, thinking that none of that "deep thinking" really matters anyway. Some people might try to find answers to these questions, and perhaps some of you have, but where what do you get when you try and answer them? (I suppose that by answering the questions I mean really sitting down and thinking about them and coming to a rational conclusion; other people may "answer" the questions, either by coming to a conclusion which suits their own self-interest, or getting someone else to answer for them, like a politician or a religious leader.)

Let's think about this, using the example above. You and I hold different viewpoints, and yet most people would say, given the situation, "Well, it's just a difference of opinion. You're each entitled to your own view."

Let's imagine a person (we'll call him John) is actually coming to you and I in our debate and trying to get us to stop arguing about abortion by saying the words quoted above. John believes (as many people do) that people may hold different views, but none of them are more right than others - there is no True viewpoint, just true-for-me or true-for-you views. You may think whatever you want, and I may think whatever I want, but it's perfectly alright for us to have our own differing views. The consequence of this is something John (and most other people) don't think about.

The consequence is that by saying that it's alright for each person to have differing views on a moral topic, John is saying that each viewpoint is no more correct than any other viewpoint. So we have a kind of world where no statement regarding moral issues is true, i.e. there is NO moral truth. We have moral relativism.

But when you think about the issue further, you realise that people on the whole do NOT differ in their conceptions of morality THAT much. Most people would agree that killing another person in cold blood is wrong, that stealing something from someone is bad, etc. It is only on the very large issues (Abortion, Capital Punishment, Euthanasia) that people radically disagree. So in saying that there IS no moral truth at all, John is effectively acknowledging that if someone holds that killing a random person on the street is morally permissible, that's alright because it's just his view and he's entitled to it. After all, John's statement implies that there is no moral truth.

Most people would see that this is absurd, for we know that killing random people is in fact a morally wrong act. This is something that is obvious to almost everyone, and philosophically it has been shown that since a person has intrinsic good, to obliterate that intrinsic good is definately morally wrong. If you don't believe me, perhaps you fall into the next catagory - a kind of Nihilism.

Some people subscribe to a Nihilism. They hold that not only is there no moral truth, but there is no point in even attempting to discern it, for any attempt is worthless since life is worthless and pointless anyway. And even if we do think killing random people is wrong, that doesn't matter either, because it's just something we've artificially constructed to keep us from falling into chaos.

While the Nihilist should be derided for such thoughts, they do have a point.

It is my contention that everything (not just ethics) in human life is an artificial contstruction (either intentional, the product of concentrated human endeavour; or unintentional, the result of evolution or the product of emergent behaviour) that in reality means nothing, i.e. has no intrinsic REASON for being. This may seem like Nihilism. And it would be if this is where I ended my analysis, but it is not. Nihilism is my starting point.

All things in human life are an artificial construction and have no intrinsic REASON or MEANING, but that does not mean that nothing matters. On the contrary, it means we must GIVE them meaning. How we do this goes not only into helping us figure out which of the two views discussed earlier is most permissible, but also into giving us meaning for life itself. We must give these things meaning through the use of rational thought; i.e. the powers of human reason.

Now it may seem at first oxymoronic to use reason to create meaning for things that have no intrinsic reason, but I believe that this is just a problem of language. By using reason, I mean using the powers of the rational human mind to come up with concepts which make sense. By intrinsic reason, I mean an inherent property or meaning of existence, e.g. The reason why we are here is to serve God, etc.

"We must use reason to create reasons for things which have no reason."

That ridiculous sentence above seems absurd, but it is an apt example of the strangeness of our language. Better said, that sentence goes like:

"We must use the faculty of the rational human mind to create meaning for all things in life, which on their own have no real intrinsic meaning or reason for being."

I'll leave this for now as my thesis statement. If you are at all concerned about this, or perhaps you're thinking I'm mad, never fear. I plan on writing something which will elucidate some of the reaons I think this way. I thought it might be better, however, to arrive at my thesis in this first discussion by beginning with something familiar to us all - truth and moral debates. In due course I may discuss ethics itself, aside from my Creation of Meaning thesis.

But before I go, let me address some possible contentions that may arise from what I have just said:

1. Why does nothing (including life) have no instrinsic meaning?
2. If nothing has any intrinsic meaning for being, doesn't that mean it all still doesn't matter?
3. If nothing has any intrinsic meaning for being, then why do we do use reason to create meaning for them? If nothing has any intrinsic meaning, doesn't that mean that rational thought is no better than any other kind of thought for creating meaning?

Those are the three big ones, and I will address those in my next essay. If you can think of any others, please post them in the comments.