Pl 258  Second Outside Class Writing Assignment

 

Topics: Personal Identity and Ethics

 

This is an exercise in creative critical writing which is intended to meet the aim of this course which is to tell a story about the stories our culture tells—the instructor’s definition of philosophy.  You, the student will be asked to choose either the topic of personal identity or the topic of ethics.  You will be asked to choose three thinkers from the topic area to engage in a dialogue with one another and you will include yourself as the fourth dialogical partner.  Each thinker must fulfill three requirements during the course of the dialogue: 1) the philosopher must explain his position on the issue to the other conversation partners and 2) give an example of his position, and 3) respond to an objection raised by one of the other participants.  As the fourth member of the dialogue, you will be asked to do the same. In order to avoid excessive use of quotes, the following format is suggested.  Give the thinker’s last name followed by a colon, e.g. Locke:, then type what he has to say, skip a space or a line and do the same for the other thinkers.  After a thinker’s name has been used once, you can merely use the first letter of the thinker’s name for subsequent remarks.

 

I Personal Identity: what constitutes someone being the same person throughout successive changes?

 

The thinkers are Ryle, Locke, Hume, Zemach, and you.  The situation: You are gathered at the Samsa household after the cleaning woman has swept up what apparently was referred to as Gregor Samsa and now is referred to as “that thing” or that beetle.  How do you four respond to the problem of personal identity as applied to Gregor Samsa (Metamorphosis)?

 

II Ethics: what principles can we appeal to in order to determine whether human free actions are morally good or bad?

 

The thinkers are Mortimer, Mill, Ayer, Duggan, and you.  The situation:  You are guests for the evening in the Irish woman’s house where the Irish guard Bonaparte comes to you for advice about a moral dilemma he is facing.  He has been ordered to execute British hostages whom he has befriended.  He asks you for advice as to what his moral obligation is in this matter.  How do you respond?

 

The paper should be thorough—if that is accomplished, length is unimportant.  It should be typewritten, single spaced, proof read, and saved on a disk.  It will be due at 5:00 PM Fri., Apr. 3, in CH 229 or CH 201, Duggan’s mailbox. Have fun!

 

 

Pl 258 1st Outside Class Writing Assignment: Knowledge and Truth

 

The narrator in James Joyce’s short story, “Araby,” says:

 

“I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real.  Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar.  I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket.  I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out.  The upper pat of the hall was completely dark.

 

Gazing up into darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (p. 9B)

 

“Araby” raises problems about knowledge and as a result about truth.  The following five philosophical accounts of knowledge and truth have been offered by professional philosophers in our text to assist the reader in resolving these issues.

 

Foundationalists:

 

  1. Plato: “Let us pass on, Simmias.  Do we say there is such a thing as justice by itself or not?”  We do say so, certainly.  “Such a thing as the good and beautiful?”  Of Course!  And did you ever see one of them with your eyes?”  Never, said he.  “By any other sense of those the body has did you ever grasp them?  I mean all such things, greatness, health, strength, in short everything that really is the nature of things whatever they are:  Is it through the body that the real truth is perceived?  Or is this better—whoever of us prepares himself most completely and most exactly to comprehend each thing which he examines would come nearest to knowing each one?” (181A and B)
  2. Descartes: “But inasmuch as reason already persuades me that I ought no less carefully to withhold my assent from matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me immediately to be false, if I am able to find in each one some reason to doubt, this will suffice to justify my rejecting the whole.”   (30A)

 

Anti-Foundationalists:

 

  1. Rorty: “In this attitude, getting the facts right (about atoms and the void, or about the history of Europe) is merely propaedeutic to finding a new and more interesting way of expressing ourselves, and thus of coping with the world.  From the educational, as opposed to the epistemological or the technological point of view, the way things are said is more important than the possession of truths.” (p. 76A)
  2. Austin: “We approach (truth) cap and categories in hand: we ask ourselves whether truth is a substance (the Truth, the Body of Knowledge), or a quality (something like the colour red inhering in truths), or a relation (‘correspondence’).  But philosophers should take something more nearly their own size to strain at.  What needs discussing rather is the use, or certain uses, of the word ‘true’.” (p. 102A)
  3. Peirce: . . . (T)he agitation of a question ceases when satisfaction is attained with the settlement of belief, and then only, goes on to consider how the conception of truth gradually develops from that principle under the action of experience; beginning with willful belief or self-mendacity, the most degraded of all intellectual conditions; thence rising to the imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized society; then to the idea of a settlement of opinion as the result of a fermentation of ideas; and finally reaching the idea of truth as overwhelmingly forced upon the mind in experience as the effect of an independent reality.” (p. 118A)

 

Pick one position from the two foundationalists and one position from the three anti-foundationalists referred to above and explain the positions to your reader, a college peer who is unfamiliar with the readings and discussions taken in class.  Give examples of the concepts employed in the argument which the reader may be unclear about.  Then indicate how and why each position would or would not be helpful to a reader of “Araby” in getting clear about what is entailed in understanding knowledge and truth.  What do you see to be the advantages and disadvantages of adopting each of these two philosophical accounts of knowledge and truth (do not confine your remarks on this last issue to the “Araby” narrative, but extend it to your own critical thinking about the matter)?

 

The paper should be typed single space, 1-2 pages in length, proof read, and kept on a disk. It is due on or before Wed., Feb. 18 at 5:00 PM in hard copy—the technology of electronic transmission is too problematic for the instructor to handle.  Bring the paper to CH 229 or CH 201, Duggan’s mailbox.