postmodernquestions

Philosophical Attacks

 

    In the effort to do philosophy, one must be willing to examine and subsequently dismiss tacit assumptions and unarticulated presuppositions. In short, one must not cling to ordinary ways of thinking simply because they are familiar. Sir David Ross undoubtedly made significant and lasting contributions to the philosophy of ethics. However, in his attempt to defeat the theory of Utilitarianism, his attachment to the familiar unavoidably bleeds through. Therefore, it is the contention of this paper that his attack on what he deems as ‘Ideal Utilitarianism’ ultimately falls short. 

 

    The best definition of Ideal Utilitarianism, according to Ross, is provided by Professor Moore. “What makes actions right is that they are productive of more good than could have been produced by any other action open to the agent.”[1] (pg.16) Ross states his primary objection in the following manner: 

“The essential defect of the 'ideal utilitarian* theory is that it ignores, or at least does not do full justice to, the highly personal character of duty. If the only duty is to produce the maximum of good, the question who is to have the good—• whether it is myself, or my benefactor, or a person to whom I have made a promise to confer that good on him, or a mere fellow man to whom I stand in no such special relation— should make no difference to my having a duty to produce that good. But we are all in fact sure that it makes a vast difference.” [1] (pg. 22) 

The problem, however, is that the only justification provided here is the unsupported assertion, “we are all in fact sure that it makes a vast difference.” This is a clear example of the logical fallacy known as Argumentum ad populum. It matters not that all believe two plus two equals four. In a proof, one is required to demonstrate logically why the conclusion naturally follows from the premises. Further, it should be pointed out that the theory of utilitarianism is primarily prescriptive in nature. In other words, it is not seeking to describe how most people normally go about navigating ethical decisions. Instead, it seeks to establish a system to determine or define what it means to call an act right or wrong. It therefore does no good for Ross to criticize Ideal Utilitarianism on the basis that it does not correspond to the way in which most people think about the process of making ethical decisions. 

 

    Ross seems to be particularly interested in the ethics involved in the complexities of human relations. He stresses the importance of these relationships so much so that he makes the following charge: 

“In fact the theory of ideal utilitarianism*...seems to simplify unduly our relations to our fellows. It says, in effect, that the only morally significant relation in which my neighbors stand to me is that of being possible beneficiaries by my action.” [1] (pg. 19) 

This charge however is guilty of attacking a straw man. An adherent to the theory of Utilitarianism would be entirely consistent in responding that these relationships are of course morally significant insofar as they enter into determining what action available to the agent would bring about the greatest amount of good. One could even go so far as to say that these relationships, far from being reduced to irrelevancy, are in point of fact part of the basis from which an agent goes about ascertaining how to produce the greatest good. 

 

    A further problem with Ross’s argument is that he leaves open too much room for equivocation concerning what exactly he means by Ideal Utilitarianism. One cannot but help to ask whether he is referring to Act or Rule Utilitarianism. Consider the following quote: 

“it must be maintained that there is a difference between prima facie duty and actual or absolute duty. When we think ourselves justified in breaking, and indeed morally obliged to break, a promise in order to relieve some one's distress, we do not for a moment cease to recognize a prima facie duty to keep our promise, and this leads us to feel, not indeed shame or repentance, but certainly compunction, for behaving as we do.” [1] (pg. 28) 

From this alone one could be led to believe that Ross is secretly an Act Utilitarian; these prima facie duties could be viewed as rules. Thus when they conflict and an agent must choose between them, it is natural to feel compunction for violating one of them. However an Act Utilitarian would ultimately refer to the first principle in such cases of secondary conflict. This confusion is not without merit especially considering what Ross states concerning the duty to produce the good. 

“besides the three (comparatively) simple goods, virtue, knowledge, and pleasure, there is a more complex good, not reducible to these, consisting in the proportionment of happiness to virtue. The bringing of this about is a duty which we owe to all men alike...This, therefore, with beneficence and self-improvement, comes under the general principle that we should produce as much good as possible.” [1] (pg. 27) 

It is unlikely that a utilitarian would necessarily object per se, to the assertion that the greatest good is complex and irreducible to any one simple good. If Ross wishes to attack Ideal Utilitarianism it requires him to somehow rebut the idea that the right action is the one which produces the greatest amount of good in the world. 

 

    While there may indeed be legitimate grounds for concern regarding the theory of Ideal Utilitarianism, the arguments presented by Ross fail to convince the skeptical mind. One must not resort to sophistry when endeavoring to conduct proper philosophical examination. This in no way invalidates the many excellent ideas raised by the venerable Sir David Ross. As previously stated, “The Right And The Good” has made what have proven to be significant and lasting contributions to ongoing ethical dialogues. 

Bibliography

1. Ross, D., The Right and The Good ed. P. Stratton-Lake1877: Oxford University Press.

 

The Pursuit of Knowing and Being Known

    When contemplating and discussing the intricately complex philosophical branch of epistemology, one can easily become overwhelmed. It is laden with myriads of apparent contradictions and insoluble paradoxes. Oftentimes, to borrow a cliché, it is far too easy to become lost in the trees losing sight of the forest. It is the contention of this paper that with the aide of Saint Augustine and Søren Kierkegaard, epistemological investigation can be reframed in such a way that avoids many of the errors inherent in the modern project. This paper will further evaluate the strengths and respective weaknesses of these two thinkers’ epistemology. Hopefully by the end of this paper the quest towards properly framing the enterprise of epistemology will be less obscure.

    Much of the business of philosophy is occupied with properly defining the question. Without this first step, an infinite production of useless answers will be generated in response to the question that was never asked in the first place. This is where Saint Augustine’s brilliance is to be located within the De magistro. Here the question is explicitly framed in terms of knowing as an inherently private affair consisting of inner episodes of awareness. This is contradistinguished from the Wittgenstein picture of knowing as a process of rule-governed behavior, accompanied by the understanding of those rules being intrinsically public. The danger of abstractions is that they tend to quickly lead to meaningless obscurity divorced from concrete examples. In that vein consider the following borrowed example:

“You rehearse to yourself the steps of a mathematical proof in an effort to understand it, but not yet grasping it: you’re merely parroting the proof. While thinking it through, however, you suddenly have a flash of insight and see how the proof works—you understand it and thereby recognize its truth.”

This example perfectly highlights the familiar phenomenological process that St. Augustine refers to as “illumination.” The denial of the significance of this moment is the Achilles heel to much of the modern epistemological approach. It seems to confirm what is instinctively known to be the case, which is that the act of knowing is an inescapably inner undertaking.

    Without overly rehashing and restating the arguments, a certain amount of review seems to be in order. Much of the De magistro is devoted to successfully refuting what is commonly referred to as the ‘information-transference account’ (hereafter referred to as ITA). In quickly summarizing, this is due to the fact that the language or sign exit transition is never truly accomplished. Instead it seems that signs are indomitably circular in a paradigmatic sense. It should be made clear what St. Augustine is not asking, namely, the nature of the relationship between knowledge and the physical world vis-à-vis sensory data. Rather, he is interested in the sort of platonic knowledge of the eternal forms. More specifically the human ability of teaching or knowledge transference is what is being properly put under the proverbial microscope. St. Augustine rightfully concludes that insofar as humans can teach, it seems to be a sort of Socratic prompting through the pointing out of signs. This however thus far leaves one at the same problem dealt with by Plato in The Meno. For various reasons St. Augustine rejects the solution of recollection. Instead he offers a uniquely Christian positive solution.

    Saint Augustine is at his strongest when properly delineating the problem at hand. However, when the mode is switched from the razor sharp deconstruction of inadequate answers to the positive construction of explanatory responses, clarity suffers. Essentially, the reader is asked to accept the idea that by virtue of mere antecedent belief in the ontological existence of a supremely benevolent divine being, humankind is endowed with access to the eternal Truth. Supposedly this god has instilled within all of mankind the internal light which renders St. Augustine’s theory of signs to be a valid epistemological approach. The obvious problem with this solution is that it is exclusively available to those who already hold that belief antecedent to reason in order to justify the reasonableness of any and all truth claims. It would seem that any epistemological approach purportedly defending the supremacy of reason should not use unsubstantiated belief as an integral, primal ingredient. Furthermore, the criticism could be fairly pointed out that this is a solution that works all too well. Whenever one encounters a difficult problem, one can simply invoke the existence of god as a way to effortlessly fill in the gaps. This response tends to have the effect of terminating further investigation due to the fact that nearly anything can be simply explained away via asserting the role of the divine.

    In turning to Søren Kierkegaard, it should be stated at the outset that, due to the intentional fragmentary nature of his writing, any explication and subsequent explanation of his work is consummately suspect. The consistent theme across his writing is a virulent reaction to the modern project perfectly personified in Hegel. Within this umbrella certain relationships are defined and explored as central to his attack on the so called “system.” The first is the fascinating hierarchical reversal of the relationship between the objective and subjective ways of knowledge. Seemingly implicit within for laymen and within philosophical discussions of knowledge the objective way is generally regarded as inherently superior. Kierkegaard however claims that this is ill-conceived. This interchange begins with an examination of what exactly objective knowledge consists of. Abstractions from the subjective experience are the raw material from which the objective is composed. The more one abstracts, the more objective one becomes. However, the more one abstracts, the further one becomes from the centrality of the phenomenological experience that is the locus and reality of the human experience. This process inevitably renders the subject as accidental. The objective way is, by very definition, coldly and irreconcilably indifferent to the subject. In contrast to many of his contemporaries, Kierkegaard is interested in a radically different epistemological relationship. Much of the present philosophical work being conducted around him was preoccupied with the relationship between knowledge and the object of that knowledge. Kierkegaard however seeks to examine the relationship between knowledge and the actual knower. This inquiry has the possibility of crumbling the perceived possibility of being able to cognitively separate oneself from the question of god’s existence. The following quote summarizes and elaborates on this point in the Great Dane’s own words:

“All essential knowledge relates to existence, or only such knowledge as has an essential relationship to existence is essential knowledge. All knowledge which does not inwardly relate itself to existence in the reflection of inwardness, is, essentially viewed, accidental knowledge; its degree and scope is essentially indifferent. That essential knowledge is essentially related to existence does not mean the above-mentioned identity which abstract thought postulates between thought and being; nor does it signify, objectively, that knowledge corresponds to something existent as its object. But it means that knowledge has a relationship to the knower, who is essentially an existing individual, and that for this reason all essential knowledge is essentially related to existence.”

    This position has the advantage of entirely avoiding the seemingly insoluble problem of properly articulating the appropriate relationship between one’s sensory data and its correspondence to things as they independently are. Instead, unlike Descartes, it begins with existence and moves from there. This move allows Kierkegaard to escape a sort of tritely pedantic type of knowledge and enter another kind of ethical knowledge that necessarily entails and prompts action. For Kierkegaard, “the goal of movement for an existing individual is to arrive at a decision, and to renew it.” In fact, “such knowledge has a telos beyond knowledge; it is meant to direct our lives.” This knowledge is not to be understood as simply another puzzle to be solved, arranged and systematized, but rather is to always root the individual in the irrefutable existence of the ethical.

    One could level the charge that Kierkegaard unfairly presumes the existence of the divine. However, this is to display a naivete concerning Kierkegaard’s intended audience. He is not interested in fabricating any sort a priori proof for god’s positive ontological existence. That would be once again going down the objective road. Now Kierkegaard’s claim concerning the special status of Christianity is one that is shrouded in doubt. In any case, if that is granted, it does not seem to allow Kierkegaard the ability to enter into any sort of epistemological dialogue with those of another faith. Although it must be said that this could quite possibly be a gross misunderstanding of Kierkegaard’s thought.

    Both Søren Kierkegaard and Saint Augustine provide an invaluable counterpoint to the predominantly prevailing modern approach to epistemology. Augustine points out that knowing is inexplicably intertwined with internal modes of knowing that cannot be reduced to access to universal exterior rules of knowing. Kierkegaard beautifully inverts our hierarchical relationship between the objective and subjective ways. Together they may not solve all of philosophy’s epistemological problems. However they undoubtedly make invaluable contributions to the proper framing of the questions begging to be asked.

Works Cited

Peter King, Metaphilosophy 29 (1998), 179–195

Ibid., p. 64

Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes, 35 (1989), 120-127

“Ethics and Persuasion: Keirkegaard’s Existential Dialectic,” The Modern Schoolman, XXXIII (1956), 218-239

Postscript., p 182

McDonald, William, "Søren Kierkegaard", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/kierkegaard/>.

Mendelson, Michael, "Saint Augustine", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/augustine/>.

Kierkegaard, Søren, and W. H. Auden. The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard. New York: New York Review, 1999. Print.

Kierkegaard, Søren, Howard Vincent. Hong, and Edna Hatlestad. Hong. The Essential Kierkegaard. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.

The Precision of acts

    The philosopher brave enough to strike out on new ground cannot be expected to be aware of all its relevant nuanced intricacies. Thus it is left to subsequent generations to work out not only what the objections and problems are but also how the pioneer himself would most likely respond. It is no different when it comes to the philosopher John Stuart Mill who has become synonymous with the moral theory of Utilitarianism. This paper will endeavor to show how Mill himself would most likely come out on the significant divide between Act and Rule. It is the contention of this paper that the orthodox interpretation maintaining an Act reading of Mill is both the most probable and consistent with the philosopher’s intention.

    In the pursuit of attempting to understand the relationship between the principle of utility and individual actions, Mill states the following: “All action is for the sake of some end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.” (2001) This would seem to strongly suggest that rules are properly understood as heuristic devices. They are important tools to be sure, but they are far from fixed. In fact, he states “to consider the rules of morality as improvable is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generalizations  entirely, and endeavor to test each individual action directly by the first principle, is another. It is a strange notion that the acknowledgement of a first principle is inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones.” (Mill 2001) Rules then, he admits, can be improved over time. However typically in most situations even an Act Utilitarian can admit that for purposes of expediency, rules are indispensable. Undeniably when an agent is evaluating the possible choices, secondary rules necessarily enter into the equation. Those rules however are being continuously reevaluated with new incoming data. Therefore rules would be evaluated on the basis that they are right in proportion as they continue to promote actions that tend to improve the general happiness. This theory “like other precepts of art, rest on middle principles or intermediate generalizations of science, in this case on causal laws from those parts of the deductive sciences of human nature and society which deal with the consequences of actions for happiness.” (Brown 1974)

    Rule Utilitarians may at this point object that far from rules simply entering in as a part of the equation of an agents moral calculus; they are instead more properly understood as the entire equation. Mill himself throughout his writing repeatedly assigned substantial importance to whether or not an action conformed with some secondary principle depending on the particular example. An agent standing before the act cannot possibly be expected to capably evaluate every particular action in accordance with the first principle. Only in retrospect is that truly possible. Furthermore, there are instances where one can argue that a secondary principle should be followed even though more immediate good could be caused by not following that rule.

    Obviously time in this case does admittedly matter. That is why Mill emphatically states “that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions: on which experience all the prudence as well as all the morality of life are dependent.” (2001) On the second objection some clarification is needed. The only way in which any Utilitarian could justify following that rule is if by doing so he or she believed that in the long run fidelity to that rule would bring about a greater amount of good than any momentary advantages.  Mill stated in a letter to John Venn: 

 “I agree with you that the right way of testing actions by their consequences, is to test them by the natural consequences of the particular action, and not by those which would follow if everyone did the same. But, for the most part, the consideration of what would happen if every one did the same, is the only means we have of discovering the tendency. of the act in the particular case.”  (John Stuart Mill 1972)

    This passage seems to be quite definitive on the matter at hand. Mill is clearly endorsing the view that ideally actions are to be judged based on the actual as opposed to hypothetical consequences. However since this is not always possible rules must be leaned on as an indispensable guide. To further illustrate the malleability of secondary principles consider Mill’s treatment of lying.

 “Yet that even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possible exceptions, is acknowledged by all       moralists: the chief of which is when the withholding of some fact (as of information from a malefactor, or of bad news from a person dangerously ill) would save an individual (especially an individual other than oneself) from the great and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in order that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be recognized, and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the principle of utility is good for anything, it  must be good for weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out the region within which one or the other preponderates.” (Mill 2001)

    This illustrates the point that ultimately for Mill “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” (Mill 2001) There is nothing necessarily innately infallible in rules under this system because for Mill everything must defer to the first principle. He is clearly defining a Utilitarian as “those who stand up for the utility as the test of right and wrong.” (Mill 2001)

    This debate has inspired countless thinkers to speculate on the matter. It is fair to say that many gallons of ink have been spilled trying to resolve debate. However, it would seem from the issues raised here there are too many discrepancies for a purely Rule Utilitarian reading to be sufficiently consistent with what Mill intended in his seminal work Utilitarianism. An Act reading seems to render Mill’s theory far more coherent.

Bibliography

Brown, D. G. (1974). "Mill's Act-Utilitarianism " Philosophical Quarterly 24(94): 67-69.

 

John Stuart Mill, F. E. M., Dwight N. Lindley (1972). Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873. Toronto Collected Works.

 

Mill, J. S. (2001). Utilitarianism Indianapolis/Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

 

Values of the Second Amendment

The cry of the rights of the individual to protect oneself is an oft repeated mantra. So much so that the other side of the debate concerning the proper limits of personal freedoms has been woefully obscured in arguments of straw men, red herrings and ad hominem.

Much has been said about values, but many seem to be belaboring under the mistaken assumption that values are an all or nothing game. A mere precursory survey of ethics or legal jurisprudence will however, quickly reveal an intractably more complex equation. One of the more vexing realizations is that societal values often compete with one another.

 In this particular case, there is a tug-of-war between public safety and individual freedom. Of course, this is an age-old dichotomy that has taken innumerable forms throughout the years. Admittedly, many of these difficulties produce less than desirable choices and results.

 Often times, there simply is no perfect answer to such insoluble problems. Thus value judgements must be made. In the case of the second amendment, context is essential. The second amendment reads as follows: 

 “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Within jurisprudence it is important to understand the difference and relationship between principles of law and statutory laws as such. Principles are the source from which rules must draw their color and tone.

Fortunately the guiding principle for the second amendment is conveniently located within the text itself. The operative phrase is “necessary to the security of a free state.” This clearly indicates that laws regulating weapons should be orientated towards improving the security of the people. It is not a carte blanche.

 As many political philosophers have noted; entering into a societal contract necessarily means relinquishing certain freedoms enjoyed in the state of nature. This means that sometimes the needs of the many will be weighed against the wants of the few for the sake of societal cohesion.

In that spirit then the question of whether or not to allow concealed carry on college campuses must be framed in the context of what is best for the overall security. The focus must be comprehensive taking into account the unique circumstances that the college population presents. This conclusion stands in stark contrast to the pro-carry rhetoric that stresses personal security ad nauseum to the explicit exclusion of the needs of the many. 

The Inconsistent Hybrid of Aristotle and Newton Within Nature Ethics

   When the tectonic plates of science shifted from an Aristotelian to a primarily Newtonian paradigm, a powerful chain reaction was irreversibly set into motion. The subsequent ripples of implications are still being felt more than 280 years later, and worked out within philosophy, science and ethics. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, much of the current language employed in discussion of nature conservation ethics contains an inconsistent hybrid of the two respective Aristotelian and Newtonian systems. Next, even a strictly Aristotelian view of ecological ethics is internally inconsistent. Lastly, environmental ethics should be primarily shaped, understood, and articulated from an unabashedly anthropocentric position. 

   One of the most important innovations of Newton was to dispense with the fundamental cause of telos to explain phenomena in the material world. This move radically banished any presuppositions professing to claim the intended or predetermined state or function of natural physical elements. From this position explanatory mechanisms can be postulated, put forth, and tested against reliable recorded data. Thus, the pursuit of legitimate science was born. However still to this day there are some people within the scientific community that attempt to superimpose a teleological vision onto a mechanized understanding of ecology. Dr. James Lovelock put forth the Gaia hypothesis as a way to understand our ecological environment. He defines it as, “a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.” (Lovelock 10) The last part of this statement is crucial as it attributes agency to the entire ecological system as a whole. It further asserts that, as a self organizing system, the ecological system has a seemingly altruistic or benevolent propensity towards a preferred state of affairs. This has the unmistakable ring of what Aristotle called eudaimonia. In his book, The Extended Phenotype Dr. Richard Dawkins persuasively points out that this theory requires the implausible belief that, from the most basic of individual to elaborately complex, organisms can act in concert with prodigious foresight and planning (Dawkins). Also contained within the rhetoric of environmental ethics is a position of assumed monolithic integrity or equilibrium within nature as a whole. Dr. Holmes Rolston puts it this way: 

“When humans gain a description of how ecosystems work, Leopold believes that a prescription arises to respect the beauty, integrity, and stability of such systems. That is not all of ethics, only an extension of it. Duties to other humans remain all they have ever been, but ‘the land’ now counts too. Duties to humans (feeding the starving) that conflict with duties to ecosystems (preserving tropical forests) remain a quite unfinished agenda.” (Rolston 182) 

This position, however, is palpably problematic, and therefore dangerous, given that Dr. Slavoj Zizek convincingly points out that nature, far from being static or harmonious, is in reality a series of violent reactions or catastrophes from which homo sapiens are often the beneficiaries. Case in point would be the exploitation and benefit from fossil fuels (Zizek). 

   Even within a purely Aristotelian view, undoubtedly the most disturbing notion of all arising from this so-called deep ecology is that, as Dr. Arne Naess puts it, “All life has intrinsic value, irrespective of its value to humans.” (Harding 51) This statement as an ethic fails to meet any sort of applicability requirement for the several reasons. First, it fails to offer any non-arbitrary criteria to differentiate what state of affairs are preferable, but also any sort of life hierarchy informing those subsequent decisions. For example, if all of life is equally intrinsically valuable, then there is no framework giving a predator any more right to live than its respective prey. Another way to frame it is to draw the analogy between a smaller component of a larger living system, such as a kidney or eye is to a body. In this system no deference is even given to sentient over non-sentient life. Dr. Janna Thompson succinctly put it this way: “How we divide up the world depends upon context and convenience. But surely an environmental ethic which claims to discover intrinsic value in nature shouldn’t depend upon the way we happen to look at things.” (Thompson 147) In short, it dismally fails the litmus test principle of nonvacuous contrast. 

   In light of these blatant contradictions and inconsistencies, nature conservation ethics should be articulated from a clearly anthropocentric position in strong divergence from and opposition to biospheric egalitarianism. This is not a radically irresponsible position of après mois le déluge; but rather is profoundly consistent with an appropriately Darwinian survival of the fittest understanding. Ecologies are dynamic systems constantly in flux with no inherently preferred state containing intrinsic value. They should be undauntedly cultivated toward states with the greatest and most sustainable extrinsic benefits for homo sapiens. This position is more honest and consistent in providing an ethical framework for informing and motivating decisions aimed at ensuring and enriching the continued existence of our own race as homo sapiens. Under this framework, even aesthetic and emotional benefits would be admissible motivators for maintaining or changing the environment in view of their necessarily extrinsic advantages. This position, unlike deep ecology, does not claim to have access to any sort of objective position (void of prejudice) from which to evaluate the inherent value of all of life in its various forms. This position could predictably be derogatorily described as human chauvinism, to which the appropriate response is of course it is. Claiming to have any other set of motivations of an objectively altruistic nature, is not merely blatantly false but palpably dishonest. Furthermore, this position lacks the false dichotomy of viewing humans as somehow distinct from nature, but instead sees them as a deeply integral part fighting for continued survival like any other species or organism. Essentially, the deep ecology movement is best described not as a valid scientific theory, but as an ideology or dogmatic religion. This position brings with it an entire set of assumed and often times unarticulated metaphysical presuppositions. As such it should properly be criticized as beyond the scope of legitimate scientific discourse which concerns itself with empirically verifiable hypothesis. 

   In conclusion, as with any scientific revolution, previously viable positions are often incalcitrant and tend to linger past their relevancy. A teleological cause is no longer needed to explain natural phenomena, and has become a troubling impediment to the continued progress of understanding. The continued illegitimate mixing of the mutually antithetical Newtonian and Aristotelian systems falls short of being consistent or helpful in discussing and discovering a proper method with which to approach the increasingly important subject of nature conservation ethics. The solution is not to regress to a purely teleological ethical framework because it is deeply inconsistent and fails to pass the non-vacuity requirement. Instead, the way forward must be to fully embrace the new paradigm and allow it to structure and inform an unashamedly anthropocentrically motivated framework with which to guide ecological conservation efforts and decisions. 

Works Cited

Holmes, III. Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989.

Taylor, Paul. Respect for Nature. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Phenotype. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1999.

Taylor, Astra, et al. Examined Life: Philosophy Is In the Street. Educational ed. [New York, N.Y.]: Distributed by Zeitgeist Films, 2009.

Thompson, Janna. 1990. 'A Refutation of Environmental Ethics', Environmental Ethics 12: 147-160.

Lovelock, James. Gaia. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 2000.

Harding, Stephan and Lynn Margulis. Animate Earth. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 2006.

Locked Out

 

    I often feel stranded in between starkly opposed cultures with no way to resolve the tension. It is a matter of my identity and how I relate to those around me. I should warn you here that if, you are looking for nice and tidy answers with a pretty little bow then, you are in the wrong place. When I was eighteen years old and fresh out of high school I decided to enlist in the United States Air Force to the tune of a six year active duty commitment. The reasons I did this are complex and meant for another post. Suffice it to say that I was young and it seemed like a good idea at the time. It did not take long however for me to quickly figure out that I in no way really fit in this military culture for a number of important reasons. 

    I found myself surrounded with people who were proudly anti-intellectual despite the fact that I worked in the intelligence field. They seemed perfectly content in the face of the profoundly troubling nature of what we were doing, to only ask questions of how to do it better and more efficiently. While I meanwhile, found my mind plagued with a radically different and potentially dangerous set of questions that revolved around why. Shamefully at times I wished I could be like them. They seemed so blissfully ignorant and happy. Many of them really seemed to believe in the patriotic american narrative of divine rescue. While I could only see the hands of american empire at work. I felt stuck and suppressed. I had no choice but to keep my thoughts and questions to myself. I found ways of venting of course but I always felt as though I was hiding something. I had to put on an act for not only my superiors and subordinates but for my peers as well. Every morning when I put on that uniform I went through a transformation of sorts. It was, in many ways, a ritual where by the time I tied my boots, stood up, put on my cover, and walked out the door I had become a character in a play that I had no choice but to play convincingly and leave my humanity at home. 

    As time went on the problem intensified to the point where I felt completely at odds with the person I became every morning as I put on that uniform. I had reached the point where I simply could not resolve my personal ethical convictions with the actions I was being ordered to carry out while in uniform. Living in that ethical tension felt like an inescapable prison. To complicate matters, the sensitive nature of my job meant that I legally could not tell anyone outside of my office what it was exactly that I did and still can’t to this day. Inevitably, I increasingly became an outsider at work as time went on. In fact after my assignment in Okinawa I was given my last assignment in San Antonio and there I resolved to keep my personal and professional life entirely separate. I never spent time with people I worked with outside of the office. Almost all of my friends were civilians in San Antonio. 

    Finally in August of 2009 my freedom was given back to me and I literally did a dance out of that office building as I left for the last time. For the first time in a long time I felt like I could breathe fresh oxygen again. I moved to Austin Texas to go back to school and I felt like the whole world was open to me once again. The transition to civilian life however proved to be far more difficult than I would have ever predicted. To begin with my lines of compartmentalization had not merely blurred but had completely vanished. These structures had so regulated my behavior for so long that their removal in many ways left me me confused and questioning my own identity. 

    However, the most troubling thing of all has been the discovery that in many ways my identity had already been deeply formed by my time in the military. The way in which I viewed the world was defined in terms of contrast to the military. The military had become my point of reference. It’s not so surprising I guess that six years years in a system like that will undoubtedly leave its marks. Being around civilians and trying to live a completely civilian life has thrown a sharp contrasting light on my own set of formative experiences that still regulate how I function and operate. But this has created problems for me in how I relate and form meaningful relationships with the people around me. Their point of reference is entirely different than mine. Their respective experiences come out of an entirely different culture and have thus deeply formed them in a profoundly different way. My hope is that as time goes on this will become less of an obstacle. I am firmly committed to continuing to purposefully engaging with those around me. But confessionally it is really tiring at times and once again I feel like an outsider. 

The Clash of Justice

 

    With all of the recent buzz lately over the shocking comments of Glenn Beck concerning his view of social justice, I began to think about the very concept of justice itself. It is one of those words where we all think we know what it means until we have to begin to explain it. Part of the problem for me here is simply the sheer scope that the word justice necessarily entails. People have used this word in countless ways to imply an infinite number of meanings. However, I would like to take it all the way back to the big three of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and see what, if anything, we can learn. In the Republic, Plato essentially equates the practice of justice as a craft to be practiced like any other. He points out that every craft is performed to the benefit of its subjects. So, when a doctor performs medicine, she is doing it not to her own benefit but rather to her patient's benefit. When a ruler rules, she is only a ruler insofar as she benefits her subjects. When a teacher teaches, he is doing it for the benefit of his students. So, when a judge practices justice, he is supposed to be increasing justice and thereby benefiting those who are brought before him. Therefore it is not the function of a judge to harm anyone but rather, by performing the function of x, increase the level of x. If in fact that means ordering the offender to pay punitive damages, this then is meant to accomplish two things simultaneously. In the case of the defendant, he is being prescribed a medicine of sorts for the state of his soul. The plaintiff, on the other hand, is being given back what was unrightfully taken, or some substitute in order to return to some semblance of previous order and balance. The point being that this is the opposite of vengeance whereby the goal is to harm by way of violence. 

    In the dialogue of Gorgias, the wily Socrates beautifully argues that it is indeed better to suffer injustice rather than to commit it. The beauty of the argument is that it indeed scales. Therfore this applies to the smallest of transgressions of injustice as well as to a brutal tyrant committing unspeakable heinous acts and everything else in between. This sentiment has indeed been echoed in all of our great religious sages such as Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and many others. 

    However, I want to take a step back and look at societal justice as a whole. Aristotle contended that the optimal political arrangement is where the conditions are provided so as to ensure the people are able to have fulfilling flourishing complete lives. This is a much more robust view of the way in which we as individuals participate in justice in our everyday lives. However, it, like every other, encounters problems in the sense that it has the tendency to create a meta layer of justice that is at least one degree removed from the local of people’s actual immediate experience. However, the screaming rhetoric from today’s conservative faction is entirely predicated on an anemic understanding of justice in the sense that it is reduced to only repressing that which they see as an unredeemable inherently savage human nature. This move purposefully restricts the scope of justice to that of overtly legally criminal acts, completely divorced from the larger socio-economic context in which they were committed. This then allows them to avoid the larger context in which societal injustices have been perpetrated by those in power. This is the classic separation between subjective and objective violence. This move, while highly expedient to their purposes, is indeed deeply disingenuous and protects the societal objective violence on which their privileged positions are entirely predicated.  

    Furthermore, on the micro level it is even more violently reductionistic. This move takes all of human complexity and reduces it to a particular negative moral phenomena. It defines humanity through the single dominant lens of the desire to have power over and against all others. This view of power is predicated on the platonic view of ontological power; whereby things are perfect insofar as they can affect others, and imperfect insofar as they can be affected by others. This is a deeply alienating move because it precludes the possibility of mutual relatedness. This lens does not allow the posture of being actively open to being affected by the world and people around us. This denies the fact that we indeed create our very identity out of what we have taken in. Most profoundly of all: it does not allow the possibility of influencing the world around us by first being deeply affected and formed by it. 

    Lastly, I will conclude by arguing that any conception of justice, therefore, must contain within it the idea of returning us to our full humanity as it were. It must view all of life as indelibly sacred, worthy of being protected and served in all of its overwhelming, beautiful, irreducible, infinite, and  complexity; full of faith, hope and love. It must recognize the alterity of the other as anything but an imperial project but, rather, one to be experienced and mutually engaged! As Richard Rohr would say, "life is not about you. You are to be about life!"

What are Ethics?

 

    I think it is interesting that so often when responding to the possibility of there being an ultimate absence of some sort of absolute moral system, whether that be religious or legal, the initial reaction tends so often to be one of despair in the face of vacuum. Whereas, I tend to have proportionately the inverse reply, which is one of hope of the possibility of actual ethical tension. The idea that I would like to explore is whether or not religious and legal systems actually act in such a way in which both society and the individual abdicate living ethically in consideration of the other. 

    One of the classical philosophical questions has been; how do you define justice. Or rather what makes something just or unjust? What defining quality unites all things just and inversely its opposite: injustice? Many philosophers over the centuries have debated this and have yet to come to a consensus. However, one thing indeed has been, I think, made clear; namely that something cannot be just merely by virtue of being legal. There exists a parallel relationship between the religious and the ethical. This is an incredibly important delineation due to the fact that the fallacious conflation of these two are so common. This distinction was beautifully explored by Soren Kierkegaard in his seminal work Fear and Trembling. Regardless however, these systems, legal and religious, in the minds of the masses are all that constitutes living ethically in so far as their mandates are strictly adhered to. 

    In the presence of such systems as absolutes, ethics are reduced to precisely following the letter of religious or legal code. This requires the banishment of living within the tension between what is legal and ethical or what is religiously pious and ethical. Inversely, in the absence of these systems, as absolutes, in the presence of the alterity of the other we are forced into the dialectical tension of how to relate ethically. There are undeniably sacrifices that accompany this symbolic move; namely the feeling of having a peaceful conscience void of existential turmoil. 

    This move in many ways signifies the grasping release of holding what is ethics and in turn opting for always pursuing what is ethical. This means that we no longer know but are on the path to knowing. Furthermore, the most unethical thing to be done is to get off of the path. 

Community as Event

    What is a community of faith? This seemingly simplistic question is actually fraught with complexity and nuance. Furthermore what is it that I am looking for in a community of faith? These are very real questions for me and I feel compelled to externalize them in the interest of analysis. This line of questioning obviously assumes first and foremost that I am genuinely interested in deconstructing not only what a faith community is but also my own experience and expectations. I must also confess that in even beginning to address these questions I will be unable to begin to engage with the totality of the thing. 

    For many I believe a community of faith conjures up ideas of what I will call a creedal based community. Loosely speaking this model can be described as a group of individuals who connect on the basis of intellectually assenting to the same sets of propositional truths or doctrines. Now I don’t necessarily think there is anything inherently wrong with this approach thus far. I suspect we all do this to some degree or another. However I do believe it has some nasty tendencies. Speaking strictly from personal experience this model has demonstrated the proclivity to emulate the country club. This then becomes indistinguishable from the ethos of the mafia as they love only those with whom they identify. These groups become entrenched in an us versus them mentality. The room for questioning becomes increasingly diminished as time goes on. Admission and continued membership becomes to be entirely predicated upon unwavering outward allegiance to the party line. Much more can be said of this model but suffice to say it is not one I am interested in joining. 

    The next model is one in which the proverbial tent is made as big as possible to incorporate as many perspectives as attainable. Here much energy is spent frantically keeping the peace and not committing to anything. The level of commitment here is arguably much lower. Furthermore the level and nature of expectations from the member of this group is substantially different. In other words the tendency for this group is that this affiliation lacks any significant performative discourse in their daily lives precisely because they do not expect it to. Again this another model that I want no part in. 

    However, what if a community of faith viewed itself not so much as centered around the paradigm of intellectually assenting to the same or different sets of propositional truths; but rather as the place in which to expect to experience an event that radically transforms ones own intersubjectivity.? This model does not attempt to relegate our differences to insignificance. Instead it attempts to create a space in which one can temporarily suspend those differences. Within this space one must enter expecting to encounter the divine and to focus on how to react to this unnameable benevolent presence. This I think requires a high level of commitment to creatively deconstructing our own man made gods. With this approach it is essential to be constantly reminded that we never discuss the nature of the divine but rather only our understandings of the divine. This however is daunting for many because it fails to become a consumable product. This paradigm demands the banishment of our utilitarian ideals. It refuses to capitulate to the demands of reductionism into guides of self help. It invites one to radically embrace the complexity and ambiguity inherently present in our every day lives. This is a community that I desperately want to be a part of. This I think is one of those topics that requires further reflection. However for now I will stop and ask you to please push back and engage with what I have written thus far.

Love and Hate

   

    How many people are walking around carrying hate in their heart? How many people cling to their bitterness? To what degree does this poison define the masses? Why do we have such an inability to let go? It seems to me that these are the questions that have been incessantly present since the dawn of humanity. They can be ignored only at our collective peril. We can no longer accept the myth that we are islands unto ourselves. We must accept the obvious and incontrovertible truth that we are inclusively deeply connected all the way down to the core of our collective ontological existence. We in the twenty first century must give up the last vestiges of the idols of the enlightenment. The enlightenment held that we were somehow distinct and separate from one another. For many of us it is easier to think of the world as a series of disconnected random occurrences from which no clear meaningful pattern will ever emerge. This then gives people the feeling of freedom to divorce themselves from the consequences of their actions. It is a sort of existentialists nightmare of sorts. I would speculate that many people bury themselves in meaningless pursuits in order to avoid these very questions. Therefore how could it not be the responsibility of us all to awake the masses from the darkness of mental slumber? Is it not the job of the poet to stir within us all an awakening of perception to the world around us and in us? Is it not the job of the prophet to scream at the top their lungs to force us to see that the shit around us is of our own making? Is it not the job of the philosopher to provoke deeper meaningful questions from the depths of our collective yearnings? Is it not the job of the teacher to teach more than regurgitation? Is it not the job of the friend to walk alongside to listen and to then faithfully hold up a mirror?

    It is strange that roughly 81% of the U.S. population lives in cities or suburbs and yet we are seemingly more disconnected than ever. Our collective feelings concerning this conundrum are even further complexing. People yearn for community and yet they spurn the very things necessary to find it. In many ways my generation is different than the ones that came before. However in this respect I fail to see any sizeable difference. We too find it incredibly difficult to engender deep community. It is genuinely exhausting and complicated to fulfill our obligations to both our friends and career responsibilities. Many find it near impossible to think of anything besides the endless stream of demands on their time. However at the end of the day we are unavoidably faced with what we want out of life. This question demands an answer and refuses deflection. To seemingly refuse and return to the slumber of incessant movement in the interest of avoidance is, in and of itself, an answer to the question.

    There is wisdom in the East and we in the West would be fools to ignore it. Much of eastern thought (Buddhism) has maintained that we are deeply mistaken if we fundamentally don’t understand our identity to be rooted first and foremost within the context of the sea of humanity. It is here ,within being connected to one another, that we can experience what it truly means to be authentically human. We must first understand that we are all ineluctably connected. Then we must learn to embrace this dauntingly beautiful reality and to shed our fear.

    As we enter into the insanity of the American capitalistic holiday of Christmas, where we worship at the altar of insatiable materialism, I would like to stop and consider this idea of humanity par example. Regardless of what flavor of religion you favor I would ask you to stop and consider the beauty within this Christian narrative. In order to understand the paradigm shifting nature of this story I think it is important to do some contextual work first. Plato argued that things that ontologically existed could primarily be defined as things which possessed the power to affect other things. Furthermore things were perfect insofar as they could affect others and imperfect insofar as they could be affected by others. This then is why Nietzsche describes life as the will to power. But what if we took that paradigm and flipped it on its head? What if we said that things increase in power insofar as they are able to both affect and be affected by others? In short, what if we gain power by the sheer ability to be in relationships? This I think is what the Jesus narrative so beautifully does. It says that the very nature of the divine is found within humanity itself in its very ability to relate to one another. This I think is exquisite to consider that beauty is found in physical messiness and not in some abstract etherial immutable realm. Again and again the greatest teachers across time and space have told us to love. We are taught to accept the absurdity of life and to live a life inspired by love. So in this season of advent I hope that I will remind myself to see the world in terms of redeemable love whatever that means. As my friends at Netzer would probably say: What that means God only knows, or perhaps thats just a bunch of bullshit spiritual prose. Maybe we are the ones God has been waiting for and perhaps he has been waiting at our door. He is waiting at our door. Now please go and live and love well!