Consistency of World Views

Consumption of caffeine is almost ubiquitous in American society (particularly in New York, the city that never sleeps). It is a behavior and cultural phenomenon that is hardly ever put into serious question. But what can we say about its performance-enhancing aspects? Is a lawyer's or student's cup-a-day coffee habit different than a baseball player's creatine regimen? This morning, I had an interesting conversation with a friend regarding caffeine consumption and his choice to not consume caffeine. Although I was far from being convinced from abandoning my occasional use of caffeine (frequent use during finals week), the argumentative structure he used was interestingly foreign to me, and our conversation seemed to almost represent the east-west paradigmatic difference in philosophy.

This friend of mine claimed that use of caffeine was bad, and explained his choice to avoid caffeine with the following two supporting arguments:

Argument 1
P1 = Caffeine is a performance-enhancing substance.
P2 = It is morally wrong to consume any performance-enhancing substance.
C = Caffeine consumption is morally wrong.

Argument 2
P1 = Caffeine consumption causes positive effects such as increased alertness, etc.
P2 = Caffeine consumption causes various side effects such as the jitters, fast heartbeat, etc.
P3 = The negative side effects of caffeine consumption outweigh the positive effects.
C = Caffeine consumption is impractical.

We have, then, a two-sided argument for why the consumption of caffeine is bad. We can summarize the overall argument, then, as follows:

Overall Argument
P1 = Caffeine consumption is morally wrong.
P2 = Caffeine consumption is impractical.
C = Since caffeine consumption is both morally wrong and impractical, it is bad and we ought not to do it.

Disregarding the soundness of the argument for argument's sake, it seems quite apparent that the argument is valid. If something is both morally wrong and impractical, must it not then be bad in all senses of the term? What seems to be problematic with this position is that the two premises assume two fundamentally competing world views, i.e. deontological ethics and consequentialism. Thus, while the argument is valid for the issue at hand, it assumes two inconsistent world views. If one is to judge the goodness of an action based on its adherence to moralized rules such as "It is wrong to consume any performance-enhancing substance," how can one also judge the goodness of an action based on its consequences such as health benefits?

In this case, both the deontological and consequentialist view produce the same result that caffeine consumption is bad, but it is not difficult to come up with a case where the produce starkly contrasting results. [See end for such an example.] Thus, if one is to maintain a consistent and systematic approach to ethics, the two views can not be maintained simultaneously across all issues. This division of deontology and consequentialism is a characteristically western canonical distinction, and my friend raised a very good question in response to my counter-argument:

Why can't I hold these two views simultaneously? Do my two arguments not compliment each other in helping me to formulate my decision on this particular issue of caffeine consumption?

The answer is perhaps not so clear. And perhaps it is worth thinking about whether, as logical and rational beings, we ought to enforce this idea of consistency in world view. Although it serves to simplify matters and the appeal to consistency is certainly compelling, perhaps it is also important to consider the possibility of being more flexible on systematic views in order to allow a more complete and holistic approach to individual issues...

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The following is a case where the deontological and consequentialist view produce contrasting results. Suppose I donate $50 to a non-profit masquerading as a world hunger advocacy group that is actually an under-cover terrorist organization. The deontologist would condone my actions on the basis that I acted upon my duty to aid the world's poor. The consequentialist, however, would find my actions to be deeply problematic in that I just contributed to $50 worth of supplies for a suicide bomber.

Pornography and Capitalism

Airing first in 2002, "American Porn" is a Frontline documentary on the American porn industry. It sheds light into some of the practices of the porn industry (especially with the current technology and internet explosion) and traces some of the history of porn legislation. In particular, the film discusses the "Miller Test," which is the current standard for determining whether or not speech can be labeled as "obscene." Based on "community standards," this rule seems to be fundamentally flawed given our capitalistic society.

First of all, I must say that I am a firm supporter of pornography in general. I think arguments against pornography as a whole are weak at best, and the current proliferation of porn represents a healthy move beyond past sexual repression. However, there are certainly examples of porn that seem intuitively unnacceptable -- child pornography, depictions of rape and (sexually charged) homicide -- that complicate the matter. Part of the beauty of capitalism and globalization is the ability for individuals to satisfy their very particular desires. Sexual fetishism should certainly not be discouraged. But where do we draw the line? "American Porn" discussed (and partially depicted) an example of a pornographic video where a woman is kidnapped, violently raped, and murdered afterwards. Though I do not immediately feel the need to place a ban on such depictions, I must admit that something does not feel quite right and am hesitant to immediately condone such forms of pornography.

The current Miller Test, defined in the 1973 case Miller vs. California, is as follows. A form of expression can be labeled obscene (and therefore not be subject to protection from the 1st Amendment) based on:

• Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards," would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
• Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

[taken from Wikipedia and based off findlaw.com]

The use of "community standards," nebulous to begin with, seems to be fundamentally incompatible with our capitalistic system if we are to maintain a morally acceptable position. Assuming that there exists some extreme varieties of porn (perhaps the previously cited example, perhaps worse) that are prima facie morally unacceptable, it is not difficult to see the way the Miller test allows capitalism to continually push us towards the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable.

The fact that the pornography industry is profit-driven, that it is in part run by average Joes whose business choice was dictated by the market means that the business is purely driven by consumer demand. As consumers demand more, these businesses produce more. Given their organizational and administrative prowess, these firms help to institutionally condone a specific genre of pornography. Now accepted by the community due to this influence, the sensationalism fades and a new wave of demand for the most experienced consumers proceeds to push the boundaries further. There is no patent mechanism for some sort of moral intervention into this process. Thus, it can be said that the Miller test for the legality of pornography is questionable in the face of our profit-driven capitalist system. (Or, we could say that it is capitalism that's the issue, but issue is much more complex and for some other time...)


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[A link to the online stream of "American Porn" can be found here.]

On Alcohol and Human Nature

Last night, I attended Sigma Nu's formal, a night traditionally filled with copious amounts of dancing and debauchery. Though I can't say that I was present last year to have a yardstick with which to measure, the night seemed to be more tame than usual; the people, more lucid. Perhaps this was due to the proximity of the night to final exams, but could it have been something else? This morning, my brother Derek suggested that perhaps the alcohol being served to us was not really alcohol. While I still remain skeptical that this was the case, the idea is interesting. It certainly would not be the first time that the placebo effect has been examined via psychological experiments. Although I cannot be bothered to dig up the articles detailing this experiment, it is certainly known that people "act drunkenly" when they genuinely believe that their drink is alcoholic (even though it is not). In fact, as Derek elaborated, this phenomenon happens at bars all the time, when bartenders serve overly-intoxicated individuals virgin drinks in order to appease their desire for alcohol without facilitating alcohol poisoning.

At first glance, this phenomenon does not seem to be very novel or exciting. Anecdotal evidence would've suggested what the psychological experiments proved. However, if we examine this phenomenon as a feature of human nature, the resulting thoughts are rather disturbing.

Let's begin with alcohol and the reason why we drink it in the first place. Discounting more marginal cases of unhealthy drinking, most people seem to imbibe with the idea of "social lubrication" in mind, seeing alcohol as a magic tonic that can loosen up those uptight New Yorker tendencies (which are not limited to New Yorkers). In many ways, this is true, and the observed effects of alcohol (again, in isolated psychological experiments) confirm our belief that being moderately intoxicated does often loosen us up to a certain degree.

What is troubling is that people are able to successfully achieve this effect without the actual alcohol, which is what the phenomenon of fake drunkenness shows us. If we all walk into a party expecting a certain behavior and environment of socially lubricated drunkenness, and if we truly believe that there is some external force responsible for this, we will act accordingly. If we realize this, and that we can achieve all of the (positive, at least) effects of intoxication without the actual alcohol, then why do we feel the need to consume alcohol? Are we not collectively intelligent enough to decide to do away with alcohol so we can avoid all of the negative side effects? Why is it so necessary for us to have alcohol as a scapegoat for our actions? It is as if drunkenness is a free pass to act outside of social norms.

My answer as to why we cannot do this is because alcohol has become so "fetishized," in the Marxist sense. Alcohol is imbued with so much cultural meaning and significance that we cannot abolish it without doing away with our cultural identity. For many teens, alcohol represents a rite of passage. For adults, alcohol is symbol of social life. Unfortunately, it seems like our more spiritual concerns of looking cool and fitting in will override the minor problems of vomit and liver cancer for now...

[NOTE: I am not trying to take a moral stance against alcohol. I am simply trying to point out the illogical and irrational nature of our alcohol consumption.]

Instrumental Friendships and Lonely Intellectuals

As I sit studying for my Contemporary Civilizations (survey course of Western philosophy, political science, history of thought, etc) final, there is one philosophical questions that seems to go glaringly unaddressed. Although Plato makes an observation about different types of friendship in the final chapters of The Republic, there doesn't seem to be much else beyond that. Here's a brief thought before I go back to studying.

It seems to me that if we carefully examine what we mean by "true friendship," the most essential feature is that the friendship is an ends and not a means. That is, a true friend can not be instrumental. Reasons for liking the friend should be much more subtle than any pure definable reason. (See my post on "Love and Rationality.") A corollary of this definition, then, is that any instrumental friends are not true friends.

Before moving on, let us refine this previous statement slightly. An friend for whom we realize instrumental reasons for liking is not necessarily excluded from the possible realm of true friendship. If we realize that we enjoy the company of a friend because they help us with our physics homework, that doesn't discredit any true underlying friendship. Rather, that part of the relationship that is grounded in utility lies mostly external to the true friendship. I say "mostly" because the motivation for helping us with physics homework could originate from true friendship on the side of the friend, in which case the veracity of the friendship is not violated. Additionally, citing reasons like "My friend is funny" or "My friend is cool" don't count as instrumental reasons, primarily because what makes someone "funny" or "cool" is hardly a rational and explicable feature. One may have theories, but a total and complete explanation is difficult. Thus, we have slightly narrowed the sense of instrumental friends in order to allow for more friendships to be "true friendships."

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this definition to accept, is that part of it hinges on the fact that we are consciously aware of the instrumentality of the friend, a knowledge that subsequently depends on our intelligence, or at the very least, an awareness that is related to our critical and reflective skills. Who but the smarter are able to rationalize and understand--or at least arrive at some ostensible understanding--of a friendship? Who but the reflective and critical would even attempt to rationalize an irrational concept like friendship? Thus, it seems that the more thinking and reflection and veering away from Socrates' "unexamined life," the more one realizes the instrumentality of one's friendships. In that sense, it seems to almost necessarily follow that intelligence or commitment to intellectuality brings about a certain degree of loneliness: a satisfaction in "seeing" the true relationships between people, but then rarely being able to engage in a true one him/herself.

This conclusion seems to be hardly inconsistent with empirical data, maybe not scientifically, but certainly anecdotally. From the nerdy kid in high school, to the office geek, to the misunderstood intellectual--when has critical thinking and self-reflection not led to being socially ostracized?

[Update: Grammar corrected, and convoluted sentences revised. May 6, 2010.]

Subjectivity and the French Subjunctive

This is relatively minor point, but I encountered an interesting distinction in class the other day with the French subjunctive. A verb mood (not tense) that is rarely discussed in the English language, it is used to "express a wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred." (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Take the following sentence, for example:

The best director that I know is Martin Scorsese.
Le meilleur réalisateur que je sache est Martin Scorsese.

Here, the verb "sache" is in the subjunctive mood of "savoir," or "to know." This is because I am expressing a judgment about Martin Scorsese as the best director I know. However, the same sentence can also be translated with the indicative mood, and the resulting meaning is quite different:

The best director that I know is Martin Scorsese.
Le meilleur réalisateur que je sais est Martin Scorsese.

In this version, the verb "sais" is in the indicative mood. What does this mean, then? By choosing to not use the subjunctive here, the sentence takes on a much more presumptuous tone. Rather than expressing an opinion or judgment about the best director one knows, it is asserting an objective truth on the topic. This sentence, then, may very well be followed by an argument as to why Martin Scorsese is such a wonderful director.

The larger point here is the amazing subtelty of language, that one can express this kind of intellectual arrogance with simply a different verb in one language, but not in another. If one takes language to be a means of expression of a people--an expression of Hegel's zeitgeist--it becomes a very fascinating study.

On A Personal Note...

I just gained transfer admission from the Fu Foundation School of Applied Sciences at Columbia to Columbia College! Now I can officially major in Philosophy (& Physics)!

Playground Tactics and Feminism

Reading MacKinnon's Feminism Unmodified (besides garnering perplexed glances from across the library table) has been enlightening and frustrating in many ways. For starters, MacKinnon's distinction between feminist analysis of male and female as fundamentally different or the same is an important one. Whereas arguing from the principle of sameness almost necessarily implies existing behind a veil of ignorance where gender is not considered, arguing from the principle of difference requires constant modification of rules, laws, traditions, etc. to "equalize" the differences. Therein lies the fundamental misunderstanding of feminism, I think. That feminists have argued from both sides makes it very confusing as to what exactly a feminist wants. The answer is equality, but how this is brought about is rather tricky.

I'd like to draw attention to feminist philosophy at a meta level, and pose the question:

Does the existence of feminist literature and philosophy promote and further this cause of "sex equality," (which MacKinnon points out is in ways an oxymoron) or does it actually hinder its own progress?

MacKinnon's philosophy is very straight-forward, and though neither apologetic nor accusatory, outlines this gender disparity in a very objective manner. In so doing, however, is she undermining her own goal? In many ways, the legal system is equal when it comes to gender, or at least has the intention of being equal. Of course, there are many problems, especially when the sameness-as-basis and difference-as-basis ideologies collide. Most of the problems that even MacKinnon raises are grounded in historical inequality and circumstances that cannot be changed. The fact that quilt-making is not true art the way a Picasso painting is--or that it is not acknowledged as such--is something that is embedded in our social consciousness based on the way we have been conditioned into believing what constitutes art. Is this more subtle form (though still powerful) of gender inequality to be fought with direct philosophy?

Part of what dealing with this question brings to mind is the playground tactic of "playing it cool," and addresses many regular conflicts we have between feigning ambivalence and confrontation. Perhaps this suggestion even seems sexist in itself in "silencing" the voices of the feminists, but that is far from my intention. We all want power, but power is also directly correlated with responsibility. As the client of this dominatrix [credit to Paige Simmons and Facebook for making this information available to me] would tell you, the pressures on "successful" men of being in positions of power are not always so pleasant. My objection is simply the fact that some of the evocative language used in MacKinnon strikes me as distancing women from men. What is truly the best method in which to pursue this gender equality?

Greeks and National Affiliation

First, I must begin by declaring my affiliation with the Delta Gamma Chapter of Sigma Nu Fraternity. Like any organization, it's had its ups and downs, but I can honestly say that I feel very lucky to be associated with so many wonderful brothers.

I, however, cannot say that I can honestly support the national affiliation of my fraternity and fraternities in general. The hierarchical and infrastructural system created in 1869 is beyond outdated and does not reflect the purposes and needs of the modern fraternity. Sigma Nu is founded on the tenets of love, honor, and truth:

To Believe in the Life of Love,
To Walk in the Way of Honor,
To Serve in the Light of Truth,
This is the Life, the Way, and the Light of Sigma Nu --
This is the Creed of our Fraternity.

Poor capitalization and punctuation aside, this creed is both decidedly vague and utterly unmentioned in the rushing process. Chapters do not emphasize it, nor should they. At the same time, I have heard it both used and misused, and it is no more than an equivocal statement with which one cannot honestly disagree. The endless paperwork and "support network" requested and provided by the national headquarters add little to nothing to the experience of being a brother, and this rhetoric merely represents the unthinking hierarchy that the old-school fraternities still aim to maintain. It's not difficult to come up with theodicies explaining away the national affilitaion, but that does not justify these ties.

Fraternities as they have become redefined are no longer centers of ideology. Most liberal college campuses have moved far beyond that, and other institutions have become leading centers for ideology. Additionally, with a diversification of such intellectual ideas and ideologies, it's impossible to capture one singular idea within the context of a far-reaching national fraternity. As numbers increase, the ideology necessarily becomes vague and diluted.

Another important problem is that the values often embodied take on a "slave" valuation of morality, as characterized by Nietzsche. The following quote comes from his first essay in the Geneology of Morals. Just like the values of the Christian institution cited here, these values of "love, honor, and truth" are no more than slave valuations of morality.

--And what do they call that which serves to console them for all the suffering of life--their phantasmagoria of anticipated future bliss?

--"What? Do I hear aright? They call that "the Last Judgment,' the coming of their kingdom, of the 'Kingdom of God'--meanwhile, however, they live 'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'"

--Enough! Enough!

What, then, can a national affiliation provide a fraternity? Fraternities have a positive associational aspect to them which is highly valuable, and provide a certain flexibility in action as well as a communal residential opportunity not available elsewhere. They are perhaps as close as one can find of a Marxist species-life on a modern American college campus, with collective material projects taken on, and--with the exception of their national affiliations--free from the constraints of a singular, forward-moving agenda.

Of course, practically speaking, the system requires a national affiliation. Even newly founded fraternities will find themselves to be proselytizing and spreading chapters to other colleges, but perhaps we ought to think as a community as to why we are involved in Greek life in the first place. Is it the values and ideologies, or the friends and people? What was it in its conception and what is it now? Should we stay true to the "intentions" of our ancestors or have we transcended the molds they've created for us?

Love and Rationality

Harry Frankfurt, Princeton Professor of Philosophy and author of The Reason for Love (more popularly, On Bullshit) says that it isn't that we have reasons for loving. Rather, it is simply that love gives us reasons. Cited as an analogy to the capitulation necessary for religious faith, this idea was brought forward by my "Philosophy of Religion" TA in discussion today. As pointed out also by John Cottingham in The Spiritual Dimension, Blaise Pascal--the famous 17th century mathematician and Catholic convert--also says, "La coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point." Or, in English, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know at all." Love amongst humans seems to be a very fitting metaphor for religion in this case because both require an openness and capitulation of the self into intellectually murky territory.

Before I begin, it's probably important to note what I mean by "love." Although I'm mostly talking about romantic love (for the sake of simplicity), I mean to include any sort of inexplicable love. True frienship, for example, would be included in this conception of "love" because we have some feeling of affinity for which we cannot completely explain. "Friends" who exist solely for some conscious purpose (e.g. helping with homework) obviously are excluded.

Independent of the religious arguments these claims about love and rationality were cited for, this idea of a primacy of love over rationality is an interesting one.* The argument made for the primacy of love is a compelling and heartfelt human one. The fact that love has been studied extensively in the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, etc. without any comprehensive or unifying theory can be seen as evidence that love somehow defies rational understanding. Even evolutionary biologists, who may argue that love is merely a set of chemical reactions in the brain that were bred into us as an evolutionary tool for survival of the species, can not possibly claim to understand the entirety of the emotion. After all, breaking it down into hormonal components--while potentially revealing about certain aspects of love or human nature--can never really encapsulate the entirety of the phenomenon.

Nevertheless, despite how resistant to rationality love may be, the body of work conducted around the phenomenon of love also shows how interested we are in coming to some sort of rational understanding of it. This impulse to provide an explantion grounded in reason of a fundamentally unreasonable feeling (or fundamentally complex feeling such that reason alone is insufficient in comprehending it) seems to be quite natural. While rationality may not be able to provide a definitive and fully comprehensive reason for love, it can certainly help us to better understand it and perhaps have a better awareness of our own love.

Can love, then, really transcend rationality, or have some sort of primacy over it? Or does rationality legitimately have a place in understanding and analyzing the phenomenon of love? Not to be cliché, but it seems like the answer is properly a combination of both. In a way, we can say that love transcends our rationality in that we can never understand our feelings of love when internal to the system, i.e. when we are loving. To put it another way, we don't (rationally, at least) choose who or what we love. But to say that love is completely independent of rationality would also be absurd, although this rationality can likely only serve as an agent of reflection, and no more. Rationality dictating love seems to entirely defeat the purpose and circumvent the definition of love. However, this claim doesn't seem to invalidate the intellectual effort spent on understanding, as Queen would call it, this "crazy little thing called love."


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*Cottingham argues for the primacy of praxis, or religious practice as a way of having religious faith without sacrificing rationality. That argument doesn't seem to really apply in the same way to love. We are then, therefore, left with the the primacy of either love or rationality, and unlikely both. [See Ch.1 of The Spiritual Dimension.]

The Internet and Alienation

Is the internet an additional source of Marxist "alienation"?

By "internet," I'm mostly thinking about social networking sites that are all the rage these days--Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.--but, for the purposes of this post, the "internet" encompasses all socially relevant applications of the world wide web where people can relate to one another and engage in a two-way communication. NYTimes.com, for example, while a wonderful website, would not be considered in this question because its main purpose is the dissemination of information and the internet is used only as a medium of delivery and not a forum where people can come together for some particular purpose. Of course, one could argue that the "comments" and discussions there are a form of social connection, which is true. The point of the example, however, is to illustrate the part of the internet I'm considering in my analysis of the possible alienation that it brings about.

Benefits of social networking on the internet abound. The popular argument for the internet seems to be the way in which it allows people to connect across geographical proximity and gives a greater access to a greater number of people. In that way, the internet allows for a flourishing of particularity, as Hegel might put it. The internet parallels capitalism rather closely, allowing for a degree of anonymity and equality (of even physical qualities, which is unique to this virtual world) while simultaneously providing for a wide swath of individual, particular interests. It's not difficult to see how the internet provides opportunities that would not be possible without it.

On the other hand, Marx's theory of alienation seems to apply quite appropriately to this relatively new form of social activity. In a way, the internet acts as an "intermediary" between humans, separating humans from direct contact with each other, much in the way that God acts as an intermediary in Bruno Bauer's argument on the Jewish question. Does the internet, then, take away from our lives as "species-beings," or our human essence? Does it alienate us from one another the same way capitalism brings about alienation of labor?

As we become more reliant on cyber-social relationships and spend more time in front of the screen, shouldn't we be wary of the consequences of this new system? Not that we can stop the internet from developing or from people taking advantage of new developments, but how can we conceive of it in such a way so that it doesn't fall into all of the same traps that capitalism has? How can we balance our cyber and physical lives, so that we can enjoy the benefits of the internet without suffering from the possible alienation?

Number One

Truth is, I've started many blogs in my life. None seem to have lasted, partly because I'm bad at commitment and partly because my obsessive standards for publishing on the scarily exposed world wide web have served as a hindrance in my being heard at all. Alas, those days are over! Following this post will hopefully be a (beautifully chaotic, maybe?) jumble of thoughts and ramblings on matters of philosophical significance.

So, why "philosophizings"? The definition the Merriam-Webster gives for "philosophize" is as follows:

1. to reason in the manner of a philosopher
2. to expound a moralizing and often superficial philosophy

I figured my credentials don't yet allow me to call what I'm doing true philosophy, although I promise I will try. Though my pretentious style of writing may contradict my aim, it is one of (humorous, perhaps?) humility. Furthermore, in being self-conscious of the derision directed at my constant ramblings, I thought I would deflect such criticisms by immediately acknowledging the fact that what am about to say can easily be construed as the expounding of essentially bullshit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah life's so easy in the ivory tower, you say. But hey, someone has to step off the hamster wheel from time to time to realize, "Shit, we're going in circles!"

So I say, philosophize on!