Spring 2010 201 Model Student Work

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Return to Human Nature

Section 1: Participation Journals

Euthyphro 10

Student 1

Throughout the entire dialogue, Socrates asks Euthyphro repeatedly what the definition of piety is. After each explanation given to him, Socrates finds the flaw and proves the definition to be false. Presumably, Socrates wants to know the answer to this question, because he is entering court on this day. He wants to be able to argue against the true definition of piety and, therefore, win the case against him. In Euthyphro’s third definition of piety, he basically says, “All that is loved by the gods is pious, and all that is hated by the gods is impious”. When Socrates says, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious or is it pious because it is loved by the gods”, he questions the definition. Ultimately, he completely eliminates Euthyphro’s previous definitions for piety. His first reason for not accepting this definitions is because, he proves that the piety came first, before the liking, through his “see/seeing and carry/carrying” analogies. Basically, Socrates means that “being liked” is a state of an object/idea already in existence. Therefore, that which is righteous is liked by the gods, because it is righteous, it isn’t righteous solely because the gods like it. Socrates offers a definition as well; "piety is a species of the genus 'justice'”. Soon enough, Socrates points out that his definition is also false. All that is pious is not necessarily just, as well as, not all that is just is necessarily pious. However, most human beings generally associate that which is pious, is also just, or considered “morally correct”. Finally, Socrates points out that there are many actions that cannot be sorted into both or either category. If you save your brother’s life by shooting a killer, it is not considered morally correct. But is it considered pious?

Are we radically wrong about our knowledge of reality?

Student 1

It happens daily: I am walking with a friend or driving in a car or running in the city and I look around and say to myself, “This is not real.” It is an incredibly surreal experience – I look around and realize that I have complete control over the situation around me and that my actions will be void of consequence. I am not crazy, or reckless, or an existentialist. I have lucid dreams every single night, realizing it is a dream about halfway through. This epiphany, that I am dreaming, awakens me to a completely different understanding of my (dream) reality. I can tell myself to wake up and reenter the reality that I know is certain. Because I know when I am dreaming and, therefore, asleep, I know when I am awake. It is the feeling that Plato’s captives in the caves must feel when they emerge from the cave into the sunlight, gaining a new understanding of reality. But what is reality? In the dictionary, reality is defined as “existence that is absolute, self-sufficient, or objective and not subject to human decisions or conventions”. This definition leaves the possibility of reality open to being different from what we interpret it to be. Reality is one thing, but our idea of reality is based off of our perceptions of experiences in the world. Whether or not our perception of reality lines up with reality is a question that we can speculate upon, but how do we know? It is unlikely that we are radically wrong about our knowledge of the world. I say this acknowledging the fact that I am no philosopher or scientist, but can attempt to combine my own thoughts with the theories of philosophers’ we have read. From an admittedly more ignorant view of this question, I say that we are not radically wrong about our perception of reality because the complexity involved in the world and the scientific intricacies of our minds and bodies and the world seem too involved for us to have been wrong the whole time. However, you could refute that idea by stating that this is all our perception, and if we were being fooled, we would not know. One thing that makes reality seem evident is our ability to taste, touch, see, feel, and hear. Our senses are the way we interact and come into contact with reality. Our senses are used millions of times during the day, and science suggests that everyone’s senses work in roughly the same. Our senses are never as strong in our dreams as they are in real life, which suggests but does not prove that we are awake when we are. I keep coming back to Descartes, “I think, therefore, I am.” Whatever reality is, the fact that I am here and thinking pays tribute to the fact that I am real in some way, shape or form. Maybe it is not the way we have perceived it all along, but I can think and ask these questions, I must exist independent of an outside force. If I exist, then I can conclude that the rest of the people in the world exist, too, which further suggests that the world is real, too. Coming from a religious viewpoint, maybe our knowledge of the world now is, indeed, incomplete. Many religions suggest death as not an ending, but a beginning. An awakening, perhaps, to full knowledge and understanding of the world. It is not that this may be wrong and that is right, but maybe this world is not as real or important as we think it and heaven (or whatever you believe) is the true reality. It may be apathetic, but, for now, if our knowledge of the world is wrong, so what? It does not change the way we live or interact with others, for now. If we are the prisoners in Plato’s cave, we are content with the shadows because we do not know anything different. It does not matter if our knowledge of the world is wrong because we cannot change it.

Student 2

I find it highly unlikely that our knowledge about the world is radically wrong; unlikely that we have been elaborately and completely deceived. I would have to concede that it is possible. I can imagine two general scenarios that allow for this possibility of our being radically wrong (As I will explain later however, just because these are the only two scenarios I can imagine doesn’t at all make them the only two possibilities. It doesn’t even make it likely). The first scenario is some kind of man made deception, while the second involves a “malicious demon” like the one described by Descartes.

First, I will consider the scenario where this radical deception was created by humans. This would be similar to the matrix or the “brains in a vat” from our reading. The technology does not, of course, exist in our world today, but you must admit that it is possible it may exist in the future. It must, therefore, be possible that the machines creating our illusion are from the future. In other words the real world is years and years ahead of the world of conjured perceptions that we think we are living in. In fact, it would make sense for these future scientists in charge of our deceptive experiment to model our illusion on something they know – namely a previous time period from their same reality.

Still, I believe that this eventuality is very unlikely. I doubt this because I cannot believe that they would be able achieve this level of sophistication. I know that there are things we can do today with technology that would have seemed unfathomable to someone from the distant past, but the world is infinitely complex. I don’t think that any technology or machine will ever be able to model it this way. I don’t believe that they could capture the beauty of the world, or the unpredictability of nature and society. And what about our personal experiences? The kind of experiences that are so personal that you don’t think you could explain them to someone else if you tried? I don’t think they could recreate the world that we know.

The second scenario I mentioned was one where we are all playthings for some super intelligent “malicious demon” who has inflicted this deception on us all. My doubt for this scenario is based in my faith instead of reason. I believe that there is a God, who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and completely good, and like Descartes, I don’t believe that this God would allow for us all to be taken advantage of in that way. As is so often the case in this skeptic argument, however, one could easily say that my belief in this God is still the work of our favorite deceptive demon.

I suppose it has to do with our perception of ourselves and our role in the universe. In the film Men In Black II agents Jay and Kay open a train locker to find a little word inside the locker containing these little creatures. For these creatures, their entire world is inside what for us is just a train locker. Then at the end of the film, agent Kay opens a door for agent Jay labeled “DO NOT OPEN,” revealing an enormous train station with huge aliens walking around. Although I still do not believe it, if you have a different view of our role in the universe, perhaps it is easier to imagine us as the playthings of some far more intelligent being.

In conclusion, I feel like I must express that I find this entire skeptic argument frustrating and useless. Ironically, it is the same reasoning that Grau (someone who obviously thought this was an argument worth spending time on) cites in our reading that explains the pointlessness. Assume that it is true that we are being deceived. Assume that everything we know is part of some perfect illusion, and there is a completely foreign “real world” out there. If it is a perfect illusion, the operator or program will never screw up and somehow shock us into waking up. Even if we do start playing with the notion that we might be under an illusion like this, any commentary we have about the “real world” might as well be gibberish because there is no way you could have any knowledge or perspective to know what you are talking about. So even if it is true that we are experiencing a deception, if there is not and never will be a chance that we will get to know or experience this other world, why even consider it. Why not just get focused on exploring the truths of the only world we have to deal with?

Svial 17:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Student 3

It is a terrible mistake to say that anything is impossible because right about that time it will be proved possible or perhaps probable. At any rate it is a foolish mistake to rule out the possibility that people are greatly deceived about the world around them. On the other hand it is unlikely that we live in a dream world, and even if we do it is not possible to prove in any way that we do.

To begin with examine the example arguments; first is the idea that we are simply in a dream world, second would be the brain a vat hypothesis, and thirdly the idea that everybody is in a vat being controlled by machines like in the film the Matrix. Descartes refutes his own argument of the world being a dream concluding that he believes in God and a kind omnipotent God would not allow this to happen to him. His more philosophical argument essentially states that a person cannot genuinely doubt their own existence. Descartes may be right on this account but there are better reasons why humanity cannot exist solely in a dreamlike state or false reality. Putnam, a philosopher who suggests the more sophisticated version of the brains in a vat hypothesis, answers that if this were really our condition we would not be able to think these questioning thoughts, “So skepticism of that kind can never really get off the ground.” (60) This seems to be the most probable of all the suggested answers.

To extrapolate upon Putnam’s argument there is the idea of causal connection. For words or sentences to have meaning a person must have an idea of what the object or idea being referred to is. People in this world are able to connect with and understand the meaning of these theories, however, people in a dream world would have no ability to comprehend the way they are trapped. They would be, “Incapable of knowing that he is in the Matrix and even incapable of successfully expressing the thought that he might be in the Matrix!” (62) Our knowledge of the Matrix effectively saves us from its grasp.

What they do not discuss is the possibility that there could be something else controlling us that we are unable to think of or understand for the very reasons people in the Matrix are unable to understand its true nature. If humanity were really trapped in a dreamlike world by some outside force people would not have the capacity to think of what it was. Even if one person were to discover the truth it is highly unlikely that the outside force would allow the knowledge to spread. If the creatures controlling people were powerful enough to create an entire false world they would certainly be powerful enough to control our thoughts to the extent that we stay away from the truth. Philosophers can purse all they like but if it is real they will find nothing, thus proving even the pursuit fruitless.

As a final point to this I would like to add a personal note. If we were all really in a Matrix of some sort why is that bad? All that these philosophers fear is the unknown. If I were in some kind of dream world I would not want to know the truth, and even if I discovered it what difference would it make? Why would people want to take away from the life they are given be it artificial or real? Even if our world is artificial we still have to ability to make with it what we will. It seems our job as humanity is to care for what is given to us despite its origins.

Student 4

I think it is possible that our knowledge of the world could be radically wrong. To clarify this I don’t think that what we know to be knowledge is per say wrong, but it is limited in its view. For example, scientific discoveries open up “realities” in the world around us, but they can’t show us anything beyond what we can perceive in this world. They can help us to understand the rules of nature in this world and can explain natural phenomena but if true reality is greater than this world then scientific discoveries can’t really tell us much. I see our knowledge of the world like knowledge inside a video game. Inside the game you can figure out how certain things work, like how to get to the bonus level, but if someone was inside the game they wouldn’t know that there was something else outside. Our knowledge is limited to what we can see in the world, and we can’t see what could exist in true reality.

This idea is similar to the plot in the novella Flatland about how an object in two-dimensions is unaware that there is a third dimension. Whenever a three-dimensional object crosses the two dimensional plane it appears as a two-dimensional object. For example whenever a cube crosses the plane it appears as a square and whenever a sphere crosses the plane it appears as a circle. The same could be true in this world. Maybe there is another dimension, or realm, outside of what we know and whenever this dimension crosses our world it appears like something that exists in our dimension. We would be unaware that this dimension exists aside from occasional phenomena that skeptics could attribute to something in this dimension. If another dimension, or realm, did exist than our knowledge of the world would be radically wrong.

In the same way that there could be another dimension outside of what we think of reality, it could be possible that what we think we know about the world could be wrong as well. Only something outside of our world would be able to see if what we think we know to be true about this world really is true. In that respect we cannot know for sure if our knowledge about the world is correct because there is no way to step out of this world to see if what we thought we knew is correct. I see it kind of like assuming that everyone hears music the same way that you do. Even though there is a lot of scientific data about how the ear receives an auditory signal and sends this information to the brain there is no way to know that someone hears music the same way as you without stepping outside of your own consciousness and experience hearing music as another person would.

The reason why I say that it is possible that we could be wrong about our knowledge of the world and do not say that it is likely or unlikely is that there is no way to prove the likelihood of this being the case. If we were living in a delusion then we would be unaware of what could exist outside of that delusion. Everything in our world would appear to be reality and we would have to use what we know inside of world to explain what could exist outside our world. There wouldn’t be any tangible evidence that couldn’t be explained away as to the likelihood or unlikelihood of our present knowledge being wrong.

Through all of humankind’s rational exploration of the world we have discovered natural laws and equations that give us knowledge to the world we live in, but there is no way to know if the world we live in is true reality. It is possible that our knowledge of what is real could be wrong. The only way to confirm or deny this hypothesis would be to travel outside of our present state and see ourselves as we would appear in another dimension, or reality, which is impossible. Therefore, I leave open the possibility that our knowledge of the world could be wrong.

Journal #6: Buddhist concept of self

Student #1

Buddhists define ?self? as the essence of a person. They argue that people are not ultimately real and that there is no true ?self.? To prove this, the chapter ?Non-Self: Empty Persons? explores what exactly makes up a person. A Buddhist believes that not all parts of a person are necessary for their existence. For example, if someone loses a limb, they sometimes survive. A key argument the author relays in this chapter is that saying there is a ?self? is to say that there is one part of a person that accounts for their identity over time. However, this is clearly not true. Mark Siderits brings up a great example about a person having a heart transplant. He argues that clearly the ?self? is not contained in a specific place like the heart of a person because people continue to survive after such transplants. Buddhists argue that there is no ?self? because everything in a person is experienced within five parts: rupa, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. A Buddhist argues the exhaustiveness claim with these five skandhas which says that these five include all possible parts, therefore ?self? can not exist elsewhere. Siderits also mentions a continuous numerical identity compared to a changing qualitative identity. There can be no ?self? if people are changing all the time, because then the word ?self? would not be referring to any one, constant thing. So instead of believing in ?self,? a Buddhist believes in ?non-self.? The main argument for ?non-self? states that the skandhas are transitory or impermanent. The author explains that if there were a ?self? it would be permanent, and all these skandhas are temporary. Siderits shares the Buddhist insight that ?since the self is simple, it cannot be changed by the experiences it is aware of. It is other parts of the person that is changed by those experiences? (35). How are we to believe that the self is simple when the a Buddhist is trying to argue that it does not even exist? How are we supposed to know which point to believe? I agree with the author that when we talk about ?I? we are speaking of our ?self.? This ?self? exists in the past, present, and future, but is continually changing. I also agree with Descartes who ?concluded that the true ?I? is not the body but the mind- a substance that thinks (that is, is conscious), endures at least a lifetime, and is immaterial in nature? (41). From my perspective, I think that a ?self? indeed exists, and that it changes for each person constantly through new experiences. We use the word ?self? to describe who we are at the moment and speak of personal experiences. These experiences include the five skandhas as well as everything else that influences who you are. I believe that ?self? continues through a persons existence, until their experiences stop at the end of their mortal life. It is interesting to me that Buddhists argue against the existence of a ?self,? but they pose a logical argument by believing that everything that influences who a person is can be found within the five skandhas. I agree with the very logical argument that if the five skandhas are impermanent, and if there were a self it would be permanent, and since there is no more to a person than the five skandhas, there is no self. The impermanence argument of the skandhas makes sense, however, I am still a little confused about how it can be proven that there is no possibility that there is more to a person than the five skandhas. No one has the right to say for another that there is nothing outside the boundaries of the skandhas that can influence a person.

Student #2

Buddhism searches for the self with the same understanding of self as many other cultures. The “self” is the part of oneself that is completely necessary to making that person exist as themself – the essence of a person. It sounds like an easy enough concept, that there is a part of one’s self that makes them them. Beginning to delve deeper into deciding what exactly that part is, though, is not as easy as it would seem. The article gives the example that without a finger, we are still ourselves; losing our desire for a certain taste does not render us less of a person either. Early Buddhism describes the five basic “parts” of a human (skandhas): 1) rupa: physical 2) feeling: pleasure, pain, indifference 3) perception 4) volition: bodily and mental activity 5) consciousness: awareness of physical and mental states. Each of these five things describes an aspect of a human. However, as the article shows, none of the skandhas can be counted as definitive of self. First of all, they are all impermanent; if they were to define self, they would have to be same throughout a lifetime and possibly beyond, and none of them can claim that. Secondly, none of them are completely under our control. Sometimes we feel or want or sense things that are the opposite of what we would prefer. One’s self would have to be something that we had complete power and control over. Thus there is “no self”. This seems to contradict the Buddhist idea of karma and reincarnation, but later Buddhism also believes in “no-self”. No self does not necessarily mean that we are empty, pointless beings, but that every thing on earth is the same life.

As much as I want to believe that I am unique, I am myself, many of the readings on self have had such convincing arguments or ideas that it has become harder for me to understand why I am me and different from anyone else. As the reading points out, nothing about us ever stays the same. The impermanence of the skandhas are a really clear example of our changing nature. Each of the qualities that are intrinsically human do not last beyond a certain period of time, leaving us wondering if anything really does. I know my body has changed and continues to change throughout my life, my ambitions and desires change, my needs change as they are fulfilled, my tastes and preferences, even my morals and values have changed and adapted throughout my life. The idea of no self is unnerving in that it suggests we are not who we think we are ever, but also comforting in knowing that I am not the only one changing. Literally everything changes from day to day and is never the same. If that is the case in the world, then it is better to know that you, too, are constantly changing as well. It makes sense that the Buddhist idea that there is no part of ourselves that makes us “us” exists. In the Western world, we have a strong focus on heaven and the idea of a soul. The prevalence of Christianity teaches us that our actions on earth must preserve our souls and better our souls so that we can go on to heaven. This mentality says that we do have a “self” and that self is our soul, as indescribable and vague as the word soul can be. I think the problem for me, personally, is that the concept of a soul is so intangible. You can tell me that my soul is unique and created by God, but that is a concept that is hard for me to grasp. The Buddhist explanation of the skandhas clearly defines what the aspects of a person, but they don’t attempt to delve into the intangible because that is not what they believe.