Ethics and Nerd-dom

One of the most famous lines in the history of comics is spoken about Spider-Man in the golden age of Marvel: “In this world, with great power, there must also come great responsibility!” The line, penned by Stan Lee, has resurfaced again and again in the world of comics. It has become the emblem of many of the heroes, the mantra that, at root, separates heroes from villains. For Spider-Man, the line is a reminder of his Uncle Ben, who originally taught him right and wrong; Spider-Man’s ethics are fueled by his intuitive conscience and a desire to make his Uncle proud.

In the golden age of comics, the 1930s – 1950s, simple moral conflicts allow unrelenting absolutist ethics. The bad guys are bad, the good guys are good. For some heroes in the 90s and later, moral conflicts became more complicated, and heroes had to deal with challenges to their traditional morality.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the challenge presented to the heroine’s ethics comes to a head in the episode “Bad Girls” (Episode 14, season 3). A new slayer comes to town, and she is wild, reckless, and determined to shirk responsibility and destiny; she relentlessly tries to prove her own free will. Although Buffy occasionally tires of her responsibility, she hasn’t really questioned her acceptance of determinism before this point. She has accepted her role as protector and defender, and has enacted her moral duties with an assumption that things that are not evil must be good. When the new slayer, Faith, accidentally kills a man, she clings to her ethical egoism. She tries hard to shrug off the guilt she clearly feels, telling herself that she does she wants and accidents happen. She justifies the loss of a mortal life with the deaths of all the vampires she’s killed.

For Buffy, the knowledge that she has been involved in an act so far from her idea of good shakes her to the core. The knowledge that a slayer, a hero, could commit murder, a crime, and admit no remorse ruptures her conceptions of morality. Faith eventually becomes an anti-hero on the show--no longer posing as a good guy, but not entirely bad, either. The issues raised by her moral ambiguity are never entirely resolved. If someone is simultaneously pulled to ethically right and ethically wrong action, how much can be forgiven?

In the real world, these conflicts of ethics manifest in the role of police. Like Buffy and Faith, police are meant to be the defenders and protectors of the innocent. However, like Buffy and Faith, individual ethics can often define whether the stated moral code and intentions of a police force are upheld. With great power comes great responsibility; what recourse is there when power forgets this?

In the Name of Nothing

With our class's recent coverage of different philosophies, such as relativism and absolutism, it was an interesting task to try and identify with one more than the others. However, the philosophy of Nihilism stood out as needing a particularly complicated approach, relying on a complete removal of our Self from the equation and perhaps the entire equation itself. Touched on with questions from our class, Nihilism roots itself in the belief (or lack of belief) that the universe has no ultimate purpose. That we're all just specks of dust floating around in the infinite abyss of space.

Despite this seemingly dreary outlook on the world and life itself, I personally take refuge in the idea of a meaningless existence. Instead of expecting compensation for a life of good deeds or a punishment for one filled with wrongdoing, I am held accountable only to myself. Even though this seemingly still attaches 'meaning' to life constructed by my desires and decisions, it exists in parallel to my understanding of the universe. As a human being, I am bound by my choices and consequences, hoping to satisfy the innate wants and needs all people wish for - happiness, love, success. However, as we stare into the depths of space hoping to understand its inner workings, it will always stare back with a relentless tone of indifference. And it couldn't be more beautiful.

Contradictions, Parents, Arguments and Justice

Argument is not contradiction(yes it is, no it isn’t), Abuse (insults), or a statement of belief. With that said a real argument is sometimes hard to come by. A small child who argues with his or her mother often would say something is black simply because the mother said it was white. The mother on the other side would respond to say, “no, it is white.” This conversation is no argument because neither side has presented any premises on the topic. If the topic is something more complex such as the child wishing to spend the night at a friend’s house then more of an argument can ensue. A small child would most likely complain and state over and over how badly he/she wants to go. The parent would come back with an actual argument consisting of premises pertaining to bedtimes, the time of week, how much time the child had already spent at that friend’s house that week. Hindsight can now tell me that I lost those arguments when I was a child because I wasn’t arguing at all!

When arguing with my peers I find that we do in fact argue, though these arguments often conclude with frustration which produces abuse and then eventually an agreement to disagree….

Tangent time: From my notes: An argument is a series of statements, facts or assertions which are interwoven or sown together to support a conclusion. An argument can be badly constructed or well-constructed i.e. valid or invalid. It may be something one believes, but not necessarily. It may produce truth statements but not necessarily. If this is so then an individual who wins an argument is not necessarily the possessor of accurate knowledge but simply the more skillful arguer. If this is so then what of our justice system. Our “fair” trial by jury is simply an argument between lawyers the result of which is simply the a question of who’s argument is stronger. So is our justice system truly just? Or is it simply a contest of who can pose a better argument?

Multiple Truths

Growing up, we are all taught the dos and don’ts of society. We develop our own set of morals while still answering to a larger moral code set up by society. What I mean by this is that we have one set of rules set up by the government and community that tell us that we cannot go around killing people or that stealing is wrong. But throughout life we also develop our own set of guidelines and beliefs that we follow.

All of these beliefs and morals are relative to the culture in which someone is raised and exposed to. For example, we have internalized that stealing is wrong, yet a band of gypsies in Europe see it as something that should be rewarded. Morals and Ethics are all relative. I believe that there are multiple truths. Just because what one person believes is different from your own does not mean it is not true, it is just not what you believe. It’s kind of like religion. We all believe in a different god or gods but I don’t think that makes their reality any less true.

"Argument" on The View

The View is a talk show on ABC with four (now five) female hosts that will many times have political discussions. A few years ago, the cast included Joy Behar, Sherri Sheppard, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and Rosie O'Donnell. During one show, Rosie and Elizabeth get into (what seems to be) a very heated "argument" about the war in Iraq.

Now that I know what an argument REALLY is, I find this clip quite amusing. These two women tried to have an intelligent discussion about the war, but all they really did was attack each other and talk over each other! They both stated a few facts about what they were arguing about.... but didn't really get anywhere.

Not to mention you have Sherri and Joy in the background trying to cut to commercial, which leaves the audience listening to four LOUD women talking over each other.

Enjoy!

Differentiating Between a Sophistic and Socratic Argument

About midway through Friday’s class, Dr. Layne introduced two different forms of argument: Sophistic and Socratic. I left class rather unsure as to whether I could differentiate the two, so I decided to do a bit of my own research to help my situation. I then decided I would share what I found to help anyone else who shared my same confusion or interest in the elaboration of these two forms of argument. What I found was that the main difference between the Sophists and Socrates in ancient Greece was their views on absolute truth. Now although Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all based their rhetoric searching for and convincing the public of the truth, the Sophists based theirs on convincing the public of whatever there was to prove. So in other words Sophists believed there was no absolute truth and therefore the truth was whatever one chose to make of it. For that exact reason, Sophists are considered the original devil’s advocate. Sophists, quite frankly, didn’t have to believe in the premises nor the conclusions of the argument (Hence the “Arguing on Both Sides” definition from our notes). According to this website, “One merely had to argue well and establish a coherent counter position using logic and rhetoric to gainsay an opponent rather than mere contradiction.” Socratic argument on the other hand, is all about analyzing the validity of the premises involved in the opponent’s argument. Socrates “would demand that his opponents define the meaning of the terms used in their argument in the hopes of evidencing that they hold contradictory opinions concerning the terms in question”.

Mechanics and Art

In Friday's class the subject of art being a mechanical process was brought up and I just wanted to show this really great video that, in my eyes, blew that statement out of the water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY

This man, Theo Jansen, completely wowed me once I saw this video. His knack to see something like that is incredible.

He defines himself as two things: an engineer and an artist. Two professions that one would not commonly associate with one another, but then I got to thinking; isn't an engineer just that? A fusion of both those fields? Bridges, computers, cars, heck even staplers were originally something that someone thought up and then created into a physical object.

Wait, what??

That's right, another topic riddled with philosophical concepts. The idea of a stapler that then somehow defines what everything is that encompasses the idea of stapler and then those ideas are then transformed into action and ultimately become a nifty device that enables the user to hold multiple sheets of paper together in an orderly fashion.

"The walls between art and engineering only exist in our mind." -Theo Jansen

Ethical Responsibility

I was really interested in our discussion of ethics this week. After reviewing the notes from class, I noticed that with freewill vs determinism, some of the questions included: "If everything in the universe obeys unchanging physical laws, how can humans have free will? And without free will, how can we be morally responsible for our actions?" For a second, I agreed with why these questions must be asked, but then I really thought about it. Everything is only expected to obey unchanging physical laws. These are laws that we as a society have come to respect. It is our free will as human beings that gives us the right to choose whether not we follow those laws. The very existance of these laws actually makes it more imperative that we hold ourselves morally responsible. Being aware that we have a choice to abide by these moral laws yet choosing not to, makes us fully responsible for conciously making the ethically wrong choice.

moral relativism

Today, the focus of our class discussion was different approaches to ethics. The practice of relativism, for example was deemed very popular among my classmates, and shown in an extremely positive light. I would definitely not call myself an anti-relativist per say, because I do believe that there are glimpses of truth in moral relativism. However, despite it's appealing aspects, I think that relativism is essentially a threat to the study of ethics. Relativists maintain that there are no moral rules that apply to all cultures or all people in one culture and that no country or person should impose his or her moral rules on any other culture or person. I definitely see the appeal in having a relativist point of view--it eliminates conflict and confusion. But if we all sat around a campfire and said "Well, he has his opinion and I have mine," we get nowhere in moral discussion and argument. Basically, we stand for nothing.

I once read somewhere that in medieval Japanese culture, the Samurai warrior class had a practice when they received their sword, it was necessary for him to try to see if it worked properly. The Samurai would then try out his new sword on a wanderer or traveler. If he could cut the stranger in half, the sword was deemed worthy. Additionally, even today such cruel practices occur in cultures outside of America. This past year I took an anthropology class on African and Middle Eastern cultures. In some of these, in order to prevent women from being promiscuous, people practice female circumcision. The reasoning goes that since the possibility of sexual pleasure is gone, then the possibility of one's wife being unfaithful is gone as well.

In response to these practices, a relativist is likely to approve of these. In reality though, human life and human dignity is significantly threatened. Should we really just stand by, watch, and let it all happen for the sake of "cultural acceptance"?

1+1=11

Though it goes against everything I’ve been brought up to understand there’s still a little part of me that continues to argue the equation of 1+1= 2. This equation is common sense to (arguably) most people and can usually be finished with a chorus of the same answer if said out loud in a large group:

“One plus one equals…?” says the speaker.

“Two,” the crowd shamelessly resounds.

However, when I was a child I confidently went against the crowd of my first grade peers and stated, “Eleven!” …And, then proceeded to feel infinitely stupid. I immediately went silent and began to fill with anger, no doubt grounded in confusion. To this day these same emotions surface every time I come across the equation; while I mutter the answer of eleven every opportunity I get.

Here’s the deal. I understand that one represents a quantity of an object, but it’s also a symbol and can stand on its own as a picture or a word. And plus, means addition and/or the act of combining (among other things depending on context). To expand your understanding of this “+” look at it on bumper stickers that encourage heterosexual marriage (attached image).

The plus sign here means a union, it doesn’t mean man + woman = one body composed of man and a woman (though that is a hilarious and ironic concept considering the intention of the bumper sticker…). What I’m trying to say is 1+1= 11, or one plus one equals eleven which equals oneone.

I thought of this experience and internal argument I have with myself every time I encounter numbers while researching articles on arguments. I also came across this hilarious manual on “How to argue effectively” which I suggest you check out for a good laugh and/or some weekend fun (just watch out because there is potential to loose some friends if the advice is followed).