Miltonian Free Will

There was an interesting discussion in Great Books today regarding the nature of free will and reason in Paradise Lost. More specifically, the question posed was “Is reason the antithesis of free will?” The argument being that if one was using reason, one would (presumably) choose to obey God every time; at least, that is the action with the best outcome.

I disagreed (as I am wont to do), saying that God says (in Paradise Lost) that if man does not have the ability to choose, then man's worship is empty, hollow; it is merely what needs to be done rather than what should be done. There are a bunch on quotes from the text on this: for example, “Not free, what proof could they have giv'n sincere/of true allegiance,” and “What pleasure I from such obedience paid/when will and reason (reason also is choice)/useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled/ made passive both, had served necessity/not me” (V.103-4, 107-11).

From a philosophical standpoint, is this true? It's been a long time since I've read Descartes or Leibniz, the people who most make me think of “applying reason to free will and God.” What about someone like Socrates or Plato? Certainly they would have believed that reason is paramount over all, but what would they have said regarding a “master plan,” or the “destiny” that is mentioned so often in Homer's Odyssey?

Odysseus

In the reading of Odysseus last week Professor Brann raised an interesting point. She asked “what do you think was the point of the game between Odysseus and Penelope?” And she also mentioned the idea that just maybe Penelope might have recognized Odysseus immediately.
I personally believe that there is a strong possibility that she had indeed recognized him in the instance she heard his voice. If we can agree that true love is an imprint of two lovers on each other it is a definite possibility. If that theory is accepted than even deaf, blind, and mute they would be able to know one another.
To answer the question as to why the games, I believe it was a way for the two to know one another once again. Ten years is a long time to be apart although once love exists it is never too late to find our back to it, it is nevertheless true that we as human need reassurance. I think that they needed to find their way back to each other; Penelope and Odysseus being who they are it is the perfect scenario.

Eva Brann

Eva Brann.

Seriously, it was a cool experience to get to see two days of presentations from Eva Brann. I had never heard of her before and I am one of those people who like listening to old people. I just think it's fascinating to hear from someone who has been around for a long time and seen a lot of things.

I don't really know a lot about the Odyssey, and even if I did it wouldn't amount to the level of Dr. Brann, but she sparked enough interest in me that I am planning on reading the Odyssey for my own personal pleasure. Seeing the level of passion that she had for this book makes me wonder what I'm missing out on.

One subject that came up during the question and answer session was about the Gods. She brought up the question of what the point of Gods were in Greek Literature. Gods can be fooled, they don't seem to really help people that much, they are not omnipotent, and they seem to enjoy watching humans go through trials, tribulations, and warfare. I had actually thought of this many times before. Honestly, being a Christian was my reason for questioning the Greek Gods and comparing them to the God of the Christian faith (sue me). Brann's conclusion was that maybe the Gods are just there as an audience and that maybe it makes people feel better knowing that the Gods are always watching.

One last note on Eva Brann, I thought it was crazy that such a sweet little old lady could be so intimidating just by the amount of knowledge she had. Craziness.

Odyssean Stagnation

From what I’ve been led to understand, Eva Brann is THE scholar—I’ve heard her name mentioned in quite a few different contexts, and specifically of late in the context of Homer. According to Dr. Thomas, Dr. Brann knows more about Homer than “any other three people alive,” which seems to me to make her eminently qualified to talk about…well, anything really, but especially Homer.

Everybody knows that Dr. Brann was at Mercer a few nights ago, talking about “Achillean Armor and Odyssean Time.” While I found her discussion to be fascinating—seriously, it had about enough content for a semester-long class—I’d like to address a parallel topic.

Dr. Brann spent a great deal of time talking about the passage of time, both in the context of the character and the text itself. But, and I don’t THINK Dr. Brann mentioned this—it isn’t in my notes—but I could be wrong, to what extent does the passage of time change Odysseus? To put it another way, I don’t think that Odysseus really has a character arc within the text.

The reader gets to see Odysseus travelling around, either from the stories he tells or from Homer’s narration. But through the whole thing, Odysseus never actually matures, or changes, or seems to learn anything, save information on how to overcome his next challenge. Is this significant? Is it important that Odysseus at the beginning of the story is fundamentally the same as the Odysseus at the end? For that matter, is it important that the other members of the cast remain the same? Is Homer trying to make some sort of statement that who were are is who we will always be? That perhaps we can make superficial changes to ourselves, but deep down, we’re the same at the beginning of our story as we will be when we plant the oar in the ground?

Is it Better to be Good or to be Learned?

Earlier this week in PHI 313 we were talking about Petrarch’s On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others. The main themes of the conversation were whether it is better to ‘be good’ or ‘be learned,’ and what it is that each of these mean. For some background Petrarch has been accused by four of his friends of being good but not being learned. Petrarch proceeds to defend being good and tries to parse out what it means to be learned, since he views himself as being learned and his friends do not.

For the purposes of this class it does not matter what Petrarch or his friends views are on the subjects, instead what matters is the question of is it better to spend your life accumulating knowledge or is it better to spend your life trying to discover what it means to be a good person and then proceeding to do whatever that means. Also how important is it for an individual to have oratory skills?

I personally find that the best life involves both being a good person and being knowledgeable. Without being a good person I would not have friends, which would greatly affect my quality of life. But without being knowledgeable it is difficult to have a career, or at least one that I would want. So what it comes down to, in my opinion, is which is more important to you, friends or money.

Does anyone come down strongly on one side or the other? And if so, for what reason?

The Philosophy of Exploration and the Space Program

Let's talk about space travel.

Recently (and I mean pretty recently, like a couple of hours ago), a few chance comments got me looking into the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, and after that the Columbia, the latter of which spelled the end of NASA's manned space program.

Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that I did the absolute barest minimum of research on this topic, I think we can get some interesting discussion out of this. This might be more of an ethical question than a philosophical one, but it's a question I want to pose anyway: to what extent should our desire to explore be tempered by the potential loss of life? How responsible is it to be one of these explorers, knowing that the risks are so high?

I mention the desire to explore, and by that I mean the need that we have to learn everything we can about the nature of our universe. It's this motivation that spawned the Renaissance; it's this motivation that sparked the scientific revolution, split the atom, and put men on the moon—but now, apparently, we've stopped. Should we let this desire for exploration be subordinate to risks?

On the other hand, the “risks” are both very real and very...well, very risky. Is it possible to justify the loss of human life? If we don't do anything, if we stay earthbound and ensure that we never have to go through another Challenger, then it's almost an admission of defeat; but at the same time, it's a promise that parents and children will never lose a loved one due to a shuttle disaster. On some level, that's worth it.

I wouldn't be much of a philosopher if I claimed to have the answers. I'm just tossing this out there.

How can we fit consciousness into the physical universe?

Ok so I did a little more research and found another interview that was done on David Chalmers. At this point, before seeing the interview, I am thinking to myself, "OK so what is it about consciousness that is important (for myself because I keep thinking about this issue) and also what is it that fascinates David Chalmers so much about consciousness?"

I mentioned the first and easy problem that he states about consciousness before but I will state it again. The first problem, which is the easy problem, is just figuring out how we react to things and how we feel about things. The second problem with consciousness, which is the hard problem, is trying to explain how all the complex interaction in the brain gives us subjective experiences in our life. For example, the sensation of looking at color, hearing music, our awareness of situations and every moment in our lives.

In this interview, the conversation with David Chalmers was a little different because he was trying to explain to this other guy why consciousness was important. The subject came up that it was possible that studying consciousness could eventually be a waste of time. David Chalmers' defense to this was that even if nothing extraordinary ever comes from studying consciousness, then at least it can lead to other important findings and information on understanding how the brain and neural processes work.

At this point I am thinking, "you know what, this isn't getting me anywhere like I had hoped so let me go ahead and find out what the definition of consciousness is." According to Gerald Edelman, who happens to be a Nobel Prize Winner of Medicine and is the founder and director of The Neuroscience Institute, consciousness is a form of awareness that is a process which is individual or personal, continuous but changing, and has intentionality. This didn't quite do if for me so I went on Wikipedia and found another answer. Wikipedia defines consciousness as a subjective experience, awareness, the ability to experience feeling, wakefulness, or the executive control system of the mind.

In the beginning, I was really interested in this topic of consciousness but now I am starting to become annoyed with it. I am beginning to think that David Chalmers is just fascinated with the fact that he can feel things and that he is "awake" to life. Through his other interviews and seeing him refer to God many times, it is obvious that he is a very spiritual person and I believe that is the reason why he is so fascinated with all of this. We experience being "aware" of everything because the brain sends signals at hundreds if milliseconds. I think what David Chalmers is more concerned with is just the sensation of experience by itself. Experiencing emotions, say seeing a beautiful waterfall for example, can possibly be an overwhelming experience. Maybe that isn't the best example but does anyone know what I'm trying to get at?

Having a great interest in reason and logic, I have always thought that there was no way that i can turn off my brain. I think EVERYTHING out, which is good and bad. The thing is, however, I thought for the longest time that even people who say they are not using the rational parts of their brain really are and just don't know it or don't want to admit it because they are afraid that it would make them responsible for the actions that they take. Even art, painting, I thought, especially realistic painting, was a manner of noticing the small details and presenting them in the appropriate way using the rational kinds of thinking. I even thought that if it wasn't realism, the artist has to think about what kind of emotion he or she wants to portray and then they proceed to do so based on some theme and normal mode and manner which coincides with their particular style. Maybe this is why I can't paint.

I talked to a painter the other day, after first Friday, and he had this to say:

"If you paint like I do you are irrational in the way you create a composition. Rational in the way you execute a painting and believe it or not when we draw realistically we are irrational. It's like an automatic mechanism that is triggered when you suppress the logic-related side of our thought."

What does that mean?

"It means when we draw we think of anything but the subject we're drawing. If your brain knows what you are trying to draw, for example an arm, you wont be able to. Unless your Raphael. In fact, you just learn to recognize lines in the objects you want to draw and you reproduce the lines, not the edge of an arm. I don't know if that makes sense to you. When they 'let go', that's what it means. You have to trust your brain. One practical example, if you fill a glass to the top and you walk across a room trying not to spill it you will be able to, walking normally, if you don't look at it. If you look at it you will spill it if you try to walk normally. Why? Because our brain is able to do more that we can imagine. If you rationalize the process you won't be able to because you are limited by the rational thought-process. If you let go Adonis Extra: and let your brain do the work your mind is able to perceive, for example, the vibrations and balance of the water inside the glass and will adjust your hand, arm automatically. You should try."

And I did. And he's right. There are some things that we do consciously that we don't rationalize, and can't. This may be obvious to you, but this shook my world a little.

Moral Hazards

I went to hear Dr. Brown (or "Doc Brown," as I'm sure every fan of Back To The Future calls him) speak on his work restoring poverty-stricken neighborhoods around Mercer. The primary focus on the talk was the various pitfalls and failures encountered by previous attempts at social engineering; for example, he discussed how the civil rights movement, while obviously effective at creating more equality, also resulted in the rigid stratification of poor blacks. Essentially, while a black middle class was created, the poorest black families were forced to remain where they were with no chance of escape.

The discussion was fascinating and wide-ranging, and raised some interesting points; however, I want to approach this from an ethical standpoint. To what extent should unintended consequences be considered when making an ethical decision?
(A brief digression: I recognize that expecting unintended consequences may, at first, sound like a contradiction of terms, and on the surface, it is; however, I am here talking about consequences that may not, at first glance, be apparent, but reveal themselves upon further consideration.)

Take a utilitarian “net good,” for example. How far in the future should the agent look? Should they even care about the long-term consequences of their actions? Would a utilitarian accept short-term loss in favor of long-term gain, or should the short-term pleasure be the primary focus?

Or consider Kant’s categorical imperative. If the decision-maker does not act with the full knowledge of the effects of his actions, can he really make an ethical decision? Can he say with absolute confidence that any situation is exactly what it appears to be?

Obviously, thinking too hard about this can result in paralysis and inaction; however, the consequences of one’s actions cannot be ignored. To do so would be to engage in gross ethical irresponsibility. Doc Brown didn’t come down on one side or the other, suggesting that these consequences were “endemic” to social engineering.