Pick one of the main arguments of the piece, one of the main ideas that the writer is trying to convince you is correct; summarize that argument; then express whether you agree or disagree with it, and give at least one reason as to why you agree or disagree.

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Philosophical argumentative essay from the paper ”The Racial Contract” by CHARLES W. MILLS

Pick one of the main arguments of the piece, one of the main ideas that the writer is trying to convince you is correct; summarize that argument; then express whether you agree or disagree with it, and give at least one reason as to why you agree or disagree.

What is Plato’s underlying attitude towards the body in this dialogue as you see it? What essentially is the human being for Plato as you can gather from this dialogue? is he correct in this? why or why not?

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CASE STUDY

At the end of the Meno (around 100b) Socrates says that if Meno can convince Anytus of the things they have concluded in the dialogue he will provide a benefit to the Athenians. Given the background of the Apology what do you think Socrates means by this. What is the overall topic of the Meno? and how is it relevant to the Athenians or to us for that matter? In the Phaedo Socrates is preparing for his death and consoling his friends that death is not a bad thing. There are echoes of the end of the Apology here. Much of the dialogue deals with arguments for the survival of the soul after death. We have already seen in the Meno the famous argument for the pre-existence of the soul to explain the puzzle of learning (cf Meno 81e ff); Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics (76a ff) will provide another solution to this puzzle that doesn’t require the preexistence of the soul. My question here regards Plato’s general conception of the body in the the Phaedo. He famously states that the proper aim of philosophy is the practice of dying and death (64a). He goes on to claim that only the philosopher (lover of wisdom) can have genuine virtues; non-philosophers overcome fear by greater fears and overcome desires by stronger desires (69a-c); virtues require knowledge and only the philosopher has real knowledge so only the philosopher can actually be virtuous. What is Plato’s underlying attitude towards the body in this dialogue as you see it? What essentially is the human being for Plato as you can gather from this dialogue? is he correct in this? why or why not? (address any or all of the above in your posting and end your posting with a question of your own). How does Descartes find certainty in the Meditations?

What is Nagel’s characterization of consciousness? How does Nagel relate consciousness to points of view? Why does it ultimately make consciousness hard to explain from the physicalist perspective?

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“What Is It Like To Be A Bat?”

Critique of philosopher Thomas Nagel’s paper, “What Is It Like To Be A Bat?” Use this paper as a source. Absolute minimum of 2000 words and please be sure to answer all questions in the following prompt:

Thomas Nagel argues that there is something especially difficult in characterizing and explaining consciousness. What is Nagel’s characterization of consciousness? How does Nagel relate consciousness to points of view? Why does it ultimately make consciousness hard to explain from the physicalist perspective?

Is this syllogism using deductive or inductive logic? Explain your answer. If deductive, test the logical validity and soundness of the syllogism. If inductive, explain if the syllogism is stronger or weaker.

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Self-Driving Cars

Watch the following Ted-Ed video Self-Driving Cars by Patrick Lin (2015) and answer the following questions:

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixIoDYVfKA0Links to an external site.

1.) At 1:19, Lin claims there’s a difference between an instinctual reaction and a conscious decision, and programmers of self-driving cars have a dilemma: they must choose what a self-driving car does when swerving into another vehicle to avoid a falling object. Lin claims, “If a programmer were to instruct the car [to hit another motorist] . . . well that looks more like premeditated homicide.” Is Lin’s argument an example of a hyperbole as rhetorical device? Explain your answers.

2.)A syllogism in Lin’s argument can be summarized as follows:
Major premise: Murder is the intentional, premeditated killing of another human being.
Minor premise: Programmers of self-driving cars must intentionally and premeditatively program a car to kill another human being to protect the lives of the driver.
Conclusions: Programmers of self-driving cars are guilty of murder if they program a car to kill another human being to protect the lives of the driver.

Is this syllogism using deductive or inductive logic? Explain your answer. If deductive, test the logical validity and soundness of the syllogism. If inductive, explain if the syllogism is stronger or weaker.

3.) At 2:03 in the video, Lin offers another ethical test. Driving in a car, you have two motorcyclists, one on the right and one on the left. One is wearing a helmet; the other is not. A programmer must decide which motorcyclists to hit. Which kind of moral reasoning—consequentialism or deontology—best applies to this scenario. Explain why. Using the kind of moral reasoning you chose, play role of the programmer, and decide which motorcyclists gets hit. Explain why you choose that motorcyclist.

4.) After viewing the overall video, which rhetorical appeal—ethos, pathos, or logos—is the appeal used best by Lin? Explain how Lin references that appeal throughout the video.

Know Plato’s view of love and eros. Why are relationships most permanent when they are based on a love of the forms? How did Plato’s view affect Augustine’s later religious view of marriage?

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Case study

Socratic Project as described in the Apology. Socrates is pursuing the truth about the Good life. The Oracle said he is the wisest person. Be able to explain why Socrates did not accept this statement. Know the process of elenchus and the 5 steps. Why is it significant that Socrates finds the contradiction in someone’s thinking?

Book 1of the Republic. Know views of justice of Cephalus, and his son and Thrasymachus. Know how the latter’s perspective reflects ethical relativism. Be able to explain the latter and contrast it to cultural relativism. Is Socrates an ethical relativist?

Know why Plato describes the heathy and the fevered city in book 2. What is the role of propaganda in the city that Plato ends up presenting to us? Explain the distinction the true lie and the lie in words. What is mimesis and how does that explain the need for propaganda in Plato’s city?

Explain why Plato first tells us the nature of justice in the city before that of the individual. Be able to describe the triangular structure of the classes of the Republic. The 3 classes and their technes (roles and jobs). Be able to explain the nature of the human soul and its 3 parts. Explain how the 3 parts of the soul correspond to the 3 classes. Explain Plato’s dualism and how it affects his view of gender.

Know the metaphysical system of Plato. The division of the universe into Being and Becoming. Know the nature and role of the forms. Be able to relate this to the cave analogy. Explain the structure of the educational system and how it correlates with the metaphysics. For example, kids start by learning stories because education starts a lowest metaphysical level (shadows). Next, they study geology and earth science because the physical objects are the next level of the world of becoming. Students also do physical education and war training because that also fits the level of objects. The next steps are learning math and finally the forms. The latter is only done by future philosopher rulers.

Know why Plato knows that his “ideal” society will notsucceed in the long term (know the metaphysics reason). Know the de-evolution of the republic into timocracy, plutocracy, democracy, and evil dictatorship. Be able to explain why the original republic fails. Be able to explain the Platonic critique of democracy. Democracies cannot be just because everyone has two technes—the one they have by nature and the job of ruling the society.

Know Plato’s view of “evil”. It is either caused by a lack of good or the physical matter of the universe itself. Know Plato’s view that the ultimate goal for the human individual is to escape the physical world and live with the forms. Explain how this idea relates to the Platonic view that our essence as human beings is the soul and the body is not significant.

Know the nature of the concept of virtue. Why are they important for Plato? Be able to define the virtues of wisdom, temperance, courage and justice. Why does the view of justice reflect Plato’s value on social harmony?

Know Plato’s view of love and eros. Why are relationships most permanent when they are based on a love of the forms? How did Plato’s view affect Augustine’s later religious view of marriage?

 

Does the government have the right (rather than merely the power) to demand a percentage of your paycheck as taxes? Why or why not? What is justice? What aspects of our society make it a just society? What aspects of our society are unjust?

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Justice and the Good Society

Questions

1. In what kind of society would you prefer to live? A large urban society; a small rural society; some safe suburb; a bustling commercial city; a quiet, more or less homogeneous town in which people more or less share the same values; a multiethnic neighborhood with many different peoples?

2. Do you believe in the death penalty for the most heinous crimes? Why or why not?

3. Should a president of the United States be impeached if his or her subordinates break the law?

4. Should shelter for the homeless be provided at government (that is, taxpayer) expense? Should this be undertaken at the federal, state, or local level? If you say, “none of the above,” what do you think should be done about the problem?

5. Is political power ultimately nothing but the rule of the strongest, the most powerful, the most persuasive on TV? Is a government anything more than the power of those who run it? Why are there governments at all?

6. Does the government have the right (rather than merely the power) to demand a percentage of your paycheck as taxes? Why or why not?

7. What is justice? What aspects of our society make it a just society? What aspects of our society are unjust?

8. Are there any reasons for paying one person less than another for the same measurable productivity?

9. Is there a “human right” to an education? Who has the obligation to make sure that you get one—your parents, the government, you yourself?

10. Do you believe that “all men [and women] are created equal”? What does this mean? In what respects are they equal?

We sometimes say that to be a good person, one must be “true to oneself.” Do you think this is so? Give examples. Do you believe that a morally good person will, at least in normal circumstances, also be assured of being a happy person? Why or why not?

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Morality and the Good Life

Opening Questions
1. We sometimes say that to be a good person, one must be “true to oneself.” Do you think this is so? Give examples.

2. Do you believe that a morally good person will, at least in normal circumstances, also be assured of being a happy person? Why or why not?

3. If a sadist were to gain enormous pleasure from torturing his or her victims—in fact, more pleasure than the pain suffered by the victims themselves—would the sadist’s cruelty be justified?

4. Is there anything you would find worth dying for? What? (Camus, in his Myth of Sisyphus, said, “A reason for dying is also a good reason for living.”)

5. Many religious commandments, in sexual and food prohibitions, tell us to abstain from the material, or bodily, enjoyments of life. Is it possible to be a religious person and deny yourself none of the pleasures of life? Or if a religion encourages us to make money, buy fancy cars, and live well, is it thereby corrupting its status as a religion?

6. Do we in fact always act selfishly, even in those instances in which we appear to be “selflessly” helping others?

7. Is it true that the “bottom line” of business is profit and profit alone? Or, even in business itself, are there other, less tangible goals that are intrinsic to and just as important as making money?

8. Do you believe that abortion is justifiable, even in cases in which the life of the mother is not threatened? How do you justify your answer, and how would you defend it against a person who disagreed with you?

9. Assuming that we agree on a list of injunctions that we all ought to obey, which we call morality, why should we be moral?

10. Would it be possible for a person to be perfectly good and yet cause harm to innocent people? Could a person be wicked even if he or she never caused any harm at all?

11. Which is more important to you, success or happiness? What if you are forced to choose between them?

12. We are a nation ruled “by laws, not men.” What does this say about our view of “men”?

We often talk about a person in love being “captive” to that emotion; is this possible? Is a person who acts out of love less free than a person who acts out of deliberate reasoning?

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Freedom

1. It is one of the main themes of American literature and folklore that freedom (or liberty) is one of the few things worth fighting for, even dying for. What does this mean? Describe a set of circumstances in which you would accept this as true. Describe a set of circumstances in which you would not accept this as true. What are the important differences between the two cases?

2. Most of what you do and say reflects the influences, training, education, examples, and rules that have affected you all your life. Some of these come from your parents; there were prejudices and preferences taught to you when you were very young so that you have never even been able to consider the alternatives. Some have been imposed on you by force (through threat of punishment or nonacceptance), and other people have subtly influenced you through television, magazines, and other forms of mass communication. Does all this make your actions and decisions any less “free”? To what extent would you be more free if you could get outside of all these influences and make decisions without them?

3. Have you ever made a decision that was entirely your own? If so, describe it.

4. We often talk about a person in love being “captive” to that emotion; is this possible? Is a person who acts out of love less free than a person who acts out of deliberate reasoning?

5. If a person commits a serious crime, but is wholly determined or caused to do so by his or her upbringing, by criminal influences, or by drugs, should he or she be held responsible for the crime? Should society be held responsible? Friends? The drug dealer? Should anyone be held responsible? Or is that just “the way things had to happen”?

6. Is freedom necessary for living the good life in a good society? Can you imagine circumstances in which freedom would be undesirable, or at least irrelevant? Is giving people freedom always giving them something good?

7. Is a person alone more free than a person bound by obligations to other people? Is it true, as our love songs often say, that breaking up a relationship is “being free again”? Is a person caught up in a web of duties and obligations at work necessarily less free than a person who, by choice, does not work at all?

Describe yourself as a character in a novel. Describe the gestures, postures, revealing habits, characteristic word phrases you use. Try to imitate yourself, by way of parody. What kind of person would you describe yourself as being?

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The Essential Self

1. Describe yourself as a character in a novel. Describe the gestures, postures, revealing habits, characteristic word phrases you use. Try to imitate yourself, by way of parody. What kind of person would you describe yourself as being?

2. Explain who you are to a visitor from another planet.

3. Who are you? Compare the descriptions you would provide
a. On a job application.
b. On a first date.
c. In a talk with your parents, as you are trying to tell them what you have decided to do with your life.
d. In a trial with you as the defendant, trying to convince the jury of your “good character.”
e. As the “I” in the statement “I think, therefore I am” (Des- cartes).

4. What is involved in being a “human being”? What (or who) would be included in your characterization? What (or who) would be excluded?

5. Is it ever possible to know—really know—another person? Imagine what it would be like to suspect that you can never know another person’s true feelings, that all his or her movements and gestures are intended to fool you and that you can no longer assume that what the individual means (for example, by a smile or a frown) is what you mean by the same outward movement. How do you feel about this?

6. You say to yourself, “I am going to move my arm.” You decide to do it, and—lo and behold—your arm moves. How did you do that?

Some of the information you have been given in your courses in school is, inevitably, not true. How would you start to prove to yourself that all of it is not false?

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The Search for Truth

1. Some of the information you have been given in your courses in school is, inevitably, not true. How would you start to prove to yourself that all of it is not false?
2. Suppose a friend were to challenge you, “How do you know that 2 1 2 5 4?” How would you answer?
3. Suppose another friend, in a provocative mood, were to ask you how you know that you are not dreaming right at this moment. What can you say? How would you prove to yourself that this is not true?
4. Is thinking rationally always the best way to think? Is the scientific answer to a question always the most true?