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my efforts to understand aristotle's work ar(e)-istotle giving me a headache

Hi! Today, we’re going to be talking about Aristotle. I know he’s a pretty famous philosopher -- I mean, he has been a major influence on Western knowledge as a whole -- so I have no idea why I haven't talked about him earlier. As you probably already know, he’s from an (Aris)totle-ly different time period than the other philosophers that I have discussed on this blog. I’m pretty excited to talk about him!

He actually was the one to establish the system of “logic.” I guess I know who to blame for my rough experience during that one random logic unit of math :\\.Honestly, I didn’t quite get it back then, and I still don’t quite get it now. Uh, I guess I’ll try to explain it as best as I can, though.

The basic parts of his theory are “inclusion” and “exclusion” relations. Aristotle starts with the concept of a deduction, an argument that is factually correct. However, he qualifies this definition by saying that there can’t be any irrelevant parts of a deduction, and there has to be new conclusions that are drawn by that deduction.

It’s kind of confusing though -- he says that deductions generally can be correct based on their structure. For example, if you say “All apples are fruit,” and “all fruits are food,” you can conclude that “all apples are food.” This would be a perfect deduction, since it just relies on the logical correctness of the statement.

Another perfect deduction could be, “I am human,” and “all humans suck,” so “I suck.” Amazing. Brilliant. Truly groundbreaking conclusions being drawn here. But, self-deprecating jokes and sarcasm aside, what’s genuinely interesting about perfect deductions is that there is no counterexample, since you deduced a universal fact. Yay.

Aristotle, after establishing this concept, basically is like, “You wanna see some real speed?” He f*cking RUNS with this. He takes these perfect deductions, combines them, and comes up with new combinations of arguments. There are different types of arguments -- counterexamples, more deductions, or syllogism (which is basically a deduction, but can be wrong).

He proves a bunch of ~ meta-theorems ~ which are key rules for modern day logic. Some meta-theorems are things like “no deduction contains negative premises,” “a deduction with a universal conclusion requires two universal premises,” and “a deduction with a negative conclusion requires exactly one premise.” Thanks Aristotle. And thank you Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for trying to explain this to me. O h b o y .

Of course, like the Big Brain Chad that Aristotle is, he uses logic in other fields of study. He sees the similarities between his logic ~ philosophy ~ and science, which he calls epistêmê. Still, science is //more// than just logic, since it uses data and arguments that must be proven before they can be used to deduce further information. Some people criticize Aristotle for being too optimistic, since he thinks that we can use our sense perception to progress into a deeper understanding of the important features of the world.

Another pretty important idea from Aristotle stems from some beef that he has with his teacher (Plato) over the theory of forms. Plato thinks that everything has a “universal form,” which is a part of this “world of forms.” This is like a property, or how something relates to other things.

For example, if I take the biscotti that I’m eating right now, it can be interpreted in two ways. So, physically, you can see my midnight snack. However, you can also analyse a “form” of biscotti, which is a part of the world of forms. Also, if you put the biscotti in my mouth, you could understand their forms in terms of their relation to each other.

What makes this even more confusing is that Plato says that there doesn’t have to actually be a physical form for a universal form to exist. In this case, he’s talking about things like the concept of “morals” and “good,” which obviously don’t have a physical form but still hold importance to us.

Aristotle comes into the argument at this point. He disagrees with Plato -- Aristotle believes that the universal form is tied to the physical form. So, instead of the universal form existing on a separate plane, it is existing within the physical object. Thus, all universals have to be attached to something, and these non-physical universal forms can’t exist.

That’s all I have for today. Also, I was just thinking, but it’s crazy how I had this blog for over a year now. Wow, I thought that I would quit within the first month, but here I am. Yay :)! Maybe I’ll try to think of doing something for the (extremely late) 1st year anniversary of my blog! (Probably I’ll just try and at least make the site more user friendly, since I’ve been trying to read my old posts, and OOF scrolling back is a pain.)

Thanks for reading!

america is pretty f*cking ~ wild-erson ~

Hi! Sorry for the late post. Last week, we found out that my grandpa was going to die really, really soon, and I honestly couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I’m sorry if I don’t sound as upbeat in this post -- I just really am not feeling it, but I need to force myself to do something so I can feel less guilty about doing absolutely nothing while I mope around. Also, just as a heads up, we might be flying over to my grandma’s home to give her some support, so I might not be able to update for a while.

Anyways, for today, I guess we can talk about Frank Wilderson. His writing is actually pretty interesting, and I really enjoyed reading his book Red, White, & Black. To be Frank (hehe), he does base a lot of his philosophy off of a few other authors, so I’ll explain their ideas as I explain Wilderson’s theories. Oof. Those teachers who say that you can’t plagiarize are really punching the air right now LOL.

Wilderson’s thesis level claim isthat Blackness is ontological, in that it exists in a fixed state that can’t be changed. Basically, it is a permanent state of being that means that one is constantly subject to systems of violence and oppression.

Then, he takes the concept of epidermalization from Frantz Fanon. Epidermalization describes the theory that there is a psychological response that is associated with a certain skin color. So, this falls within a symbolic order of a spectrum of what is “white” vs what is “Black”. A person would either react with extreme hatred or extreme attraction to Blackness. Wilderson uses this to justify how everybody is influenced by this system.

He also takes some ideas from Orlando Patterson. Patterson believed that there was an ontological conception of what is “white” (humanity, rationality) and what is “Black” (disrespectful, nonhuman). These conceptions led to social death, which Patterson says is the current state of Black people.

There are three pillars of social death: natal alienation, which is how Black people were taken from African and were stripped of their culture; gratuitous violence, which is where the hatred of Blackness requires that there be more violence than necessary to satisfy the psychic desire to commit said violence; and general dishonor, which is where Black people are devalued by white people.

I’m definitely not doing either of these scholars justice by just summarizing a tiny fraction of their work (but then again,, I’m doing that for every philosopher I’m talking about on this blog,, oof), and I hope to revisit them in the future!

Anyways, going back to Wilderson. He believes that there are two types of “death”, so to speak. One type is the social death as described by Patterson, where it is violence from individuals. The other type is political death. This is basically violence from the state itself.

He uses the phrase structural antagonism, which refers to the system and the general infrastructure of the state. It is antagonistic because it is the opposition of the slave to the master. He believes that the system of slavery has never really been abolished, but rather, has been reincarnated into different forms (ie, slavery => Jim Crow laws => prison industrial complex).

This has a few impacts. First is “objective vertigo” -- it is the sense in which you never feel as if your identity is tied to a meaningful system. Because the state and the individuals all are against you, it is hard to think of yourself as human. Then, there is the material harm, which results from the fact that violence will be exerted against you. Because the entire system is built upon the social and political death of Black people, general reform would be impossible.

Wilderson doesn’t really describe any implementable solutions to these problems. Oof. I don’t know how accurate his claims are, but even just by looking at what’s happening on the news, I can see why he might have made those claims.

Anyways, I hope you at least learned something from this post! Thanks for reading :)

rawls describes the raw-ls basics of a democracy

Hi! I forgot to update yesterday, so sorry for being a day late. That being said, I’ve just been feeling so frustrated with what’s been going on in the past week, so I think it will be nice to just have a break from all that by diving into philosophy :).

Today, we’re going to be talking about John Rawls. I don’t know why, but I’ve always imagined him to be an ancient fossil from the 1700s, and OH BOY am I wrong. He’s only somewhat old -- he was born in the 1920s, so I was only, like, 200 years off.

In general, Rawls focused on justice, thinking about how it applied to citizens and society as a whole. He theorized about how to be a free and equal citizen within a democratic government. The freedoms that come along with a democracy can be promoted globally if there is a diversity of worldviews.

Rawls’s political philosophy isn’t simply based upon a single moral principle, but rather, he believes that the correct principles for individual sub-domains of the political domain should depend on the given circ*mstance. I definitely agree with him in that a single moral principle can’t govern everything, but also, it can definitely be hard to try and figure out a unique solution to every situation. Then again, what do I know. Oof.

He defines a couple of sub-domains, one of which is a self-contained democratic society which stays in place for a long period of time. Once this society is ~ stable ~ (to which I say can be /neigh/ impossible hehe), the next sub-domain is a society of nations. There are more sub-domains, but I don’t think Rawls or I really care right now to specifically address them LMAO.

Within those sub-domains, he has an order that he follows to fully understand the situation (ideal theory and then non-ideal theory). Ideal theory basically follows utopian rules, so nobody is causing any conflicts and people generally live in decent conditions. Just think Sims, except without having to worry about them setting your kitchen on fire or them peeing in the middle of a hallway. The ideal theory allows us to envision a perfect world that provides a blueprint as to how we can fix our current, extremely non-ideal world. So, I guess the Sims metaphor doesn’t really extend to that part of the explanation, as I doubt you would want your world to look like your Sims universe...haha jk...unless??

Anyways, after you find out the ideal theory, you could find ways to adapt your ideal theory to the real world. You would have to reframe your ideas, but again, the ideal theory just gives you a rough outline to work with. It’s like when I make a rough outline of my ideal essay then disappoint all my expectations by writing a sh*t essay, because reality sucks. Oof.

After going through all that, Rawls came to his own conclusion about what a free society would look like. He has three fundamental basics that he believes a democracy should have: citizens are free, citizens are equal, and the society is a fair system of cooperation.

Even if there could be multiple ways for society to interpret these basics, they would all share a few features: every citizen would have individual rights and liberties (like rights of free expression, liberty of religious/ethical belief, and free choice of occupation), these rights will be given a priority over the demands for the general good (like increasing national wealth), and the citizens would have the means to effectively implement their granted rights.

As he thinks that humans are not irredeemably self-centered, dogmatic, or power-hungry, Rawls believes that citizens can embrace toleration and the bare basics of a democratic regime. That’s honestly a really optimistic view of humanity, and even if I don’t know if I can necessarily agree with it, it is really uplifting to hear.

I hope my post at least brightened your day, and if not, then thanks anyways for reading!

we live in a society :) and we hobbe(s) a social contract :)

Hi! WOW I’m so sorry that it’s been so long. School is (almost) over for me, though! So, hopefully, I should have more time to be more regular in my updates. It’s kind of a big yikes that I can’t find any motivation to do anything during this quarantine, but I’ve been trying to get better about it. I baked banana chocolate chip bread today! And it’s so good! And doing something other than laying down on my bed and scrolling through social media and ignoring all my classwork has reminded me of this blog (for some reason). So I shall try to revive it :D!

Anyways, today I thought that we should talk about Thomas Hobbes! I’m not going to lie, I’m really sorry, but at first I wrote down “Calvin Hobbes” because HAHAHA I, being the small brain self that I am, immediately was reminded of “Calvin AND Hobbes,” and hearing the last name “Hobbes” made me think, “Ah, Calvin Hobbes.” As you can tell, it’s been a while since I really thought about philosophy, which makes me kind of sad, since I’ve really enjoyed this! Anyways, I just thought that it would be nice to get back into things with a philosopher who I am relatively familiar with, so I wouldn’t have to muddle through their philosophy right off the bat LOL.

So, he is most famous for his contributions to social contract theory. But before we get to that, I think it is important to talk about his materialist beliefs. No, I’m not talking about “materialist” as in only caring about “making his pockets hurt,” but as in the genuine material aspect of the world. He simply believes that talking about intangible objects was useless. Basically, since none of the “intangible concepts” that philosophers tend to theorize about could exist without the real world, he thinks that the real world should come first.

Anyways, as he thinks that only the material world matters, without taking into account the nuances of intangible objects, then that led to him theorizing that humans would be driven by material needs. So, in a life without government, each person would have a right to everything in the world, leading to a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). I’m proud to say that I actually can use what little I know of Latin to translate random Latin phrases :). Thanks to my Latin teachers, you’ve all been the real ones.

Uh, moving on! He calls this situation the “state of nature.” Basically, as this is “nature,” everybody is going wild. There is no order, and people don’t have any of the tools necessary to reach what we would assume is a comfortable life, since there is literally no society. To get out of this conundrum, people would have to forfeit some of their rights to enter a social contract. Once they overcome those (H)obbes-tacles, they can finally establish a civil society.

Hobbes defines a society as a population and one which is ruled by an absolute power. As the ruler derives their authority from the individuals who surrender their own freedom for protection, he concludes that people have no reason to complain, since they empowered the ruler to do those very actions that they dislike. That gives off very strong mom vibes, like when they are feeling schadenfreude and are laughing at your struggles while saying “You brought this on yourself.” Oof.

In terms of the government, he thinks that there should be no separation of powers, so our democracy is Not Approved™ by Hobbes. Once again, I’m emphasizing how Hobbes thinks there should be A B S O L U T E power by the authority to manage the society, which is….interesting….

I’m still kind of confused on why (or if?) people who are born from the original founders of a society are obligated to fully submit to the authority in a Hobbesian society. I mean, I doubt that Hobbes would approve of people just leaving a society that they dislike, so I'm confused on what these descendants would do when the authority abuses their power or something. I guess that’s just some food for thought.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

being this edgy is a s-art-re form

Lol hi sorry it’s been a REALLY REALLY long time. At first, I was busy... and then I forgot about this blog. Yikes. Sorry!!!! Since my time has been freed up because of a certain global pandemic that I don’t really want to think about right now, I thought to myself, “Why not revive this dead blog!” So here we are, necromancy shenanigans and all.

Today, we’re going to be talking about Jean-Paul Sartre! Honestly, as a side note, I’ve been trying to learn French (since I have s o m u c h t i m e on my hands), and his name is THE MOST FUN thing to say. Like, I feel 10000% percent more of a stuffy academic with a (terrible) snooty French accent. Also, if anybody has any suggestions for how to learn French, please please please let me know. Duolingo’s passive aggressive emails are great and all, but I don’t really know if my pronunciations for anything are right and ughhhhhhhhhh.

SO. Sartre. He’s the existentialist guy. But before we talk about that, let’s talk about his opinions on ~ basic ~ ideas. He thinks that ontology is different from metaphysics. Metaphysics, according to him, is supposed to explain ideas like the uLtImaTe origins/ends of people and the universe. But, like an absolute savage, after dropping all that info, he’s like “I can’t answer that LOL” and then leaves. Bless. On the other hand, he does explain a lot more about ontology.

Basically, he thinks there are two types of being: being-in-itself and being-for-itself. The in-itself simply “is”; it has existed the same way that it has always been. The for-itself, on the other hand, is the opposite of the in-itself. It’s fluid and nonself-identical. Put together, it constitutes a duality that is cast as “facticity.” Think of it like a strawberry-banana smoothie: it’s made up of strawberries and bananas, but based on how we live our life, we can put in differing ratios of strawberries and bananas (ie, you put in 50000x more strawberries than bananas because you’re not a monster and you like strawberries but only put in bananas to satisfy your mom who wants you to eat a wider variety of fruit).

Ahem. Anyways. For-itself/others is relevant in terms of the Other (the other subject, duh). The Other grants us the ontological status of “being-in-itself” by objectifying us. What’s interesting about this is that it is possible for a collective subject (“us”) to have that status, despite not being an individual.

However, he doesn’t think that we are an in-itself, but rather, a presence-to-self. So, we are free, since we transcend our selves and are fluid. Since we are in opposition to the in-itself, that could imply that we are “other” to our selves, as we are not-being whatever perspectives are ascribed to us. Honestly, this part doesn’t really make that much sense, and maybe I’m just being a big dum-dum. From what I could tell, Sartre basically thinks that we can choose however we view ourselves.

OK, hopefully that’s Sartre-ing to make sense. Now, this helps build up to existentialism! Some general notes on it -- essentially, it’s an ~ edgy ~ philosophy. Actually, thinking about it, most philosophies are edgy, so this isn’t particularly unique. I digress. Existentialism is, at its core, about challenging the individual to examine their life for authenticity and to become more aware of the oppression and exploitation in the world.

Authenticity is a pretty central concept to existentialism in general. He thinks that one has to be responsible for sustaining one’s state, so I guess this feeds back into his idea about being able to choose.

The opposite of authenticity, which is, sUrPrIsInGlY, inauthenticity, can be demonstrated in two ways. Either, you could deny your own choice, or you could defy the already established facts. Both are ways of...just lying to yourself LMAO… but the former is simple self-deception while the latter is lacking connection to the real world. Oof.

Yeah, so that’s Sartre. If I think of anything more, I’ll come back to this, but this is all I got for today. Also, sorry if you’ve been getting random updates as I try to update the site. I’m technologically impaired (because I’m mentally a boomer) so this will take some time. I didn’t realize how terrible the site looked before now lmao. I’ll...figure it out….someday……. ghadsfkjapweoiajfpoij

ANYWAYS! As always, thanks for reading!

(schopen)hauer we doing as human beings so far, you may ask. we’re doing terribly.

Hi! Uh. Oops? Sorry for not updating in a while. Not that this excuses my absence or anything, but everybody decided that giving tests and assignments at the same time, right as my brain checked out for break, would be a good idea. Y a y . I probably failed, like, most of my tests, but that’s a 2020 me problem, not a 2019 me problem :):):). On that note, happy holidays!!! Even if you don’t celebrate anything right now, I hope you have a good day!

Today, we are going to be talking about Schopenhauer. For some reason, I always thought he was a 20th century philosopher, but nope! Apparently not. He was actually alive at around the same time as Kant???? Whack.

Speaking of Kant, he was a pretty big critic of the guy; I guess you could say that Kant was on the S-chopen-hauer block?? I tried, OK, IDK man. It’s really hard to make puns on Schopenhauer’s name. Anyways!!! For one, he disagreed with the thought that our ~ sensations ~ have an external “cause” (in that we know that there is some always existing object/”thing-in-itself” that causes our own feelings).

As a result, Kant’s reference to this “thing-in-itself” as an object of any kind is basically wrong. If we have to refer to this ~ uninfluenced object ~, we don’t try to explain its existence through cause and effect (since if it’s an object that’s always existed, it cannot be created), but instead through something else altogether.

Schopenhauer thinks that the world has a double aspect: “Will” and representation. He thinks that Will and representations are the same thing, just from different perspectives. Rather than one causing the other, they are more like two sides of a coin. “Will” is a mindless, non-rational impulse that is the base of our drives. This is unique in that he thinks that the Will is devoid of intellect.

He notes that our body is both perceived as a physical object (which will then be subject to n a t u r a l laws) as well as a conscious(?) object (which we inhabit and which we experience the world through). Thus, this is the only object that is “given” in two different ways, as representation (externally) and as Will (internally).

Think of it this way: when you move your hand, we don’t first will it to happen, which then causes the movement of the hand (well, it actually does, but who cares???). Instead, the process for moving our hand is just one act, where you both will your hand to move and actually move it.

Anyways, he regards the whole world as having two sides, Will and representation. In this vision of the world, he conceives the world as being inherently meaningless; it doesn’t strive for anything, so it goes nowhere (which is a big mood o o f-).

What we experience is made up by the objectifications of Will that correspond to the principles of “sufficient reason”. Platonic Ideas are the direct objectifications, and immediate objectivity, of Will. The indirect objectifications appear when our minds apply “sufficient reason” to introduce concepts like time, space, causality, etc. The world of everyday life eventually emerges, in these fractals of Platonic forms.

This leads him to conclude that humans, because we always want to know ~ anything and everything ~, objectify an appearance for ourselves that involves the fragmentation of Will. This results in a world of constant struggle, since this blind striving energy becomes broken up and consumes itself. Thus, Schopenhauer becomes pessimistic (which he is pretty well known for being LOL) and thinks that we are the * anguished * products of our own making.

There is honestly more to this, where he talks about them ~ pessimism tingz ~. But. You know. I’m tired and I just want to get this uploaded before I quit and fall into a coma LOL. Hopefully, one day I will have the motivation to finish this, but for now here is the introduction to Schopenhauer’s philosophy!!

Thanks for reading!

we are all plants in god’s (kierke)gaard-en?????

Hello hello!! Happy Thanksgiving (to those who celebrate it) and happy weekend (to those who don’t)!!! Sorry for not updating last week, oooof. I was really busyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yikessssssssssss.

aNYWAYS. Today, we are going to talk about Kierkegaard!!! Fun fact, for the longest time, I thought he was a girl because I was thinking of another philosopher (who was, in fact, female)...yikes. But! Kierkegaard is still cool. He was pretty key to the ~ conceptualization ~ of existentialism.

One of his main ideas is this “leap of faith” concept. It basically has to do with how someone would believe in God, or how they would act whenever they are in love. Having faith would mean that you would be willing to commit to God or your significant other, no matter what. Obviously, there is no material evidence that can justify that total commitment - but you commit anyways. So, having faith would mean to also have ~ doubt ~.

OK, that might not make much sense. Uhhh, think about it this way: your “rational” part you *doubts* that believing in God is based upon actual evidence. Still, you *faithfully* believe anyways.

Having faith is very different from being able to materially observe something; after all, you can’t observe God, so you can’t draw rational conclusions about their existence. Still, you believe in them. As Kierkegaard writes, "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world.” Wowowowow, super ~ poetic ~.

Ummm, Kierkegaard also (Kierke)regaards the self as being pretty important as well. Hehe. Anyways, there was something that he wanted people to understand - the self and the self’s relation to the world means that they interpret truth in their own ~ unique ~ way.

The key word here is “interpret” - for example, two individuals may both believe that many of those around them are sick and need help, but only one might then actually help them. Because everybody ~ interprets ~ their own beliefs in different ways, everybody ends up using their knowledge in different ways.

He also has some stuff on ethics (sorry I’m bad at transitioning, don’t @ me :(((). UHHH. Yeah. He kind of defines ~ ethics ~ in two ways: 1) a limited existential “stage,” which is replaced by a higher stage of religious life, and 2) a part of life which is kept even within the religious life.

In the first sense, “ethics” represents the ~ social norms ~, which are used to justify an action within the limited sphere of the community. Literally almost anything could be justified for the sake of the community - look at the witch burnings, they thought burning people to death was justified to rid the town of an “eViL”.

Still, there are some duties that can’t be justified in terms of social norms. Like, if you have a ~ divine command ~ to, I don’t know, kill someone, it’s something that can’t be explained intelligibly to the community in terms of (the first definition of) ethics.

So, Kierkegaard believes that (now using the second definition of ethics) the distinction between ~ good ~ and ~ evil ~ is dependent on God. Ultimately, God’s definition of the distinction between good and evil oUtRaNkS any human society’s definition.

But there is even more to this than simply listening to God’s commands. Like, we need to ~ hear and obey ~ in different ways. For example, you can obey willingly, begrudgingly, or not at all. You can be selectively deaf (like I am while the ~ fam ~ starts arguing at Thanksgiving) or totally deaf. Still, before we even are able to carry out our duties, we need to cultivate faith, since we first have to be able to acknowledge/believe that the command came from God in the first place.

Yeah. That’s all, f o l k s. In conclusion, Kierkegaard is a religious d00d and I’m very tired and confused lol. Also, sorry for the bad title, IDK what else to put man.

Thanks for reading!

bertrand russell is like b-russell sprouts but better(?)

Hey! Wow, for the first time in a while I don’t think I’m late while updating. Yay!!! Congratulations, self!!

Anyways, today we’ll be talking about Bertrand Russell. Russell is kind of a hard name to make puns about, but I’m sure I’ll be able to Russell up a few. Hehe. For real, though, Russell is a pretty cool guy - I mean he made major contributions in fields ranging from mathematics to philosophy!

Umm, so basically, he used ~ logic ~ to try and orient himself as a philosopher. He believed that it was the philosopher’s job to discover the logically ideal language. Ie, Russell believed that general facts, facts that are generally true, as the phrase might imply LOL, are necessary. As for negative facts, facts which affirm a “negative” statement (like “apples are not oranges”), Russell ~ famously ~ was conflicted on if they were needed to understand the world.

But even beyond that, he was wanting to know if it was even possible to know anything. Russell basically combined his scientific knowledge with his “humanities(?)” knowledge to answer this.

First, he developed his theory of logical atomism. Basically, all truths are based upon “logical atoms”, which are all basic true facts. Using these basic true facts, we can then build a larger “molecule”/conclusion. I’m big sad because I thought I could escape from influences from chemistry at least outside of school but n o p e . Anyways, our inferences are basically “logical constructions”.

This logical atomism also has a methodological view, which recommends ~ analysis ~, which is where analytical philosophy probably got its name from. Yay for my brilliant analyses. But, this process basically constitutes attempts to define or reconstruct complex ideas into simpler ones.

This is important, since this helps us realize that the “common facts” that we believe to be indivisible are actually inferences reached through understanding a bunch of more basic facts. We can build logical constructions through “sensibilia”, which is the fAnCy word for “our own senses”.

Thus, we adopt “the S U P R E M E maxim in scientific philosophizing” (emphasis added hehe). Basically, we should always try to break down these logical constructions. Anything that can’t be further broken down is called an “ontological atom”. Ontology describes traits that are fundamental to something; ie, “roundness” is ontological to balls, since a ball wouldn’t be a ball if it wasn’t round. Going along that logic, an “ontological atom” is something that is the most basic concept possible. Ontological atoms are also logically independent of one another.

In this context, Russell makes his ~ famous ~ distinctions between two kinds of knowledge of truths: direct, infallible truths vs indirect, open to error truths. The “direct” kind of truth is capable of being known directly through facts of sensation and logic. On the other hand, the “indirect” kind of truth is derived from the more “direct” truths.

Basically, Russell wanted to really Rus-sell the necessity of the “scientific method” in philosophy. Hehehe. He hoped that by encouraging this logic, philosophers would exhibit the underlying “logical form” of natural-language statements. The statement’s logical form would then help resolve problems associated with the a m b i g u i t y of language.

That’s basically all I could understand without going too much into calculus it! Thanks for reading!

john stuart mill is not your run-of-the-mill guy

Hi! Oops, I know I said that I would be updating every weekend, and I swear, I did mean to update!!! I had a tournament over the weekend though and I didn’t get hope until very late. I’m so sorryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy :((((.

Anyways. Today, we are going to be talking about John Stuart Mill!! OO: There are a Mill-ion different things that I want to talk about him, but today we will be focusing on his work with utilitarianism.

I can’t remember if I talked about utilitarianism before on this blog, so I’ll briefly explain what it is. The definition of utilitarianism varies, but there’s one that I’m pretty sure is the most ~ basic ~ one: if we know pleasure is good and pain is bad, then we should do our best to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

Mill came to the conclusion that util is ~ true-til ~ because he thinks that knowledge can only be gained through empirical observations. That means that our assumptions aren’t “genuine knowledge” - usually. The only type of inference that is valid would be something that is ~ warranted ~.

The question becomes how we can be justified in an iNdUcTiVeLy suggested conclusion (at this point, I’m just reminded of the show Sherlock… Benedict Cumberbatch is so hot O:). Mill says there are two ways we can reach these conclusions.

The first way is through the “iterative” validation of induction. Its justification is kinda circular, though, since this iterative validation assumes that if nature is repetitive, then if we see the same pattern enough, then we can assume that the pattern is true. However, this initial assumption is not necessarily true, and is based on the same assumption that nature always will be patterned, if that makes sense. Lemme rephrase this: we can’t always know that nature is going to be ~ uniform ~, since we can’t see every instance of a form of nature, but we just assume so because everything else we have seen so far has led us to believe that. But that assumption itself is just based on the nature is uniform assumption.

Then, he has this “initiating” validation of induction. Mill thinks that we are ~ naturally ~ inclined to reason inductively, so induction as a method of reasoning seems reasonable. This leads us to Mill’s argument for utilitarianism.

He says we want pleasure because it is simply natural to do so, so we are motivated to fulfil those desires. We can’t know if this is “good reasoning” before we observe anything, so we can only make decisions based off of what we naturally desire. Thus, Mill advises that we, instead of plainly Mill-ing about and not doing anything, should practice observation of both ourselves and of others. The data that we can get by observing what we desire will be used to prove what is desirable

Of course, we have desires of things other than happiness/pleasure. But, Mill believes that these desires are ultimately used as a means to reach happiness. Ie, let’s say my ~ desire ~ is to look at Benedict Cumberbatch’s acting. Still, the only reason why I desire that is because whenever I see him as Sherlock, I feel impressed and happy from how cool he is. Therefore, I’m ultimately aiming to just please myself.

Mill then takes this point and says that each person’s happiness is ~ equally ~ desirable (which can be problematic if someone desires to kill someone else but w h a t e v e r). Basically, he thinks that the good of a bunch of people is only made up by the sum of the good of its members. Therefore, to maximize the good of a general group of people, you have to make actions that will generally please as many people as possible.

And that is utilitarianism! Y a y ! Thanks for reading! :)

it’s the disciplinary (fou)cault

HI!!! Uh, sorry for not updating on Wednesday. I’m changing my update schedule so that I upload an article on Saturday/Sunday. I think it will be easier for me :’((((((. Sorrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy hghhghghghghghhg

Anyways! Onto today’s topic! I HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THIS. AJDSPFOIJAPWEOIJAPOIFJ. Sorry about that, it’s just that Foucault is like… my boy???? I know I say that for like most philosophers, but Foucault, man. Homie B)

(oh god why am i like this)

ANYWAYS UH.

Foucault has ….a lot of ideas. Today, I’m going to be talking about ~ the panopticon ~. For a rough idea of what a panopticon is, if anybody watched The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1, then it’s basically the jail where Peter and the gAnG was stuck in. Essentially, the prisoners there were able to be observed by all the guards from every angle. This allows for a ~ perfect ~ system of observation, obviously. Since it is easier to see everything, then it is easier to enforce the norms and control people.

Foucault talks about three main ways of control: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, and ~ the examination ~. Hierarchical observation builds off of the idea of observing people, ideally through the panopticon. However, since that usually isn’t possible, there is a need for relays of a “hierarchy” of observers, through whom the observations will pass from lower to higher levels.

Normalizing judgement discusses a distinctive feature of modern power/disciplinary control, which is concerned with people’s ability to reach the norms. The judgement part comes in as people are punished for dEvIaNt behavior (sorry, I can’t take that word seriously since I keep on getting reminded of that stupid ass Divergent series). Discipline through imposing standards is very different from the old system of judicial punishment, which merely judges each actions as allowed by the law. This form of discipline discerns between what is “normal” and what is “abnormal”.

Lastly, examination is a method of control that combines hierarchical observation with normalizing judgement. This is the ~ prime ~ example of power/knowledge, since it combines “the deployment of force and the establishment of truth.” The goals of power and knowledge cannot be separated, since it is through knowing what we control that we can control what we know, if that makes sense.

Through making people visible to the System™, they are able to be put under more control, since with the data garnered from the observations, the people can be sorted into groups. Those smaller groups are easier to control. Then this empowers the system and allows it to be able to observe even more people.

This principle obviously is applied to prisons. However, it also applies to basically any system of disciplinary power: a factory, hospital, school, etc. Foucault theorizes that this has pervaded aspects of modern society.

The disciplinary techniques produce “docile bodies”, bodies of citizens who have been subjected to disciplinary power to become more useful and easier to control. The (Fou)cault-d, hard truth is that the functions, movements, and capabilities of the human body have been broken down into narrow segments (grouped), analyzed in detail (observed), and recomposed in a maximally effective way (disciplined).

This theory’s main significance is that it reveals the processes of subject formation that operate in modern penal institutions. The prisons have evolved to not only punish its inmates, but to also categorize them as “delinquent subjects,” people who have a deviant, criminal nature.

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading!!!

the (rou)sseau-cial contract

Uhhh, hi??? Sorry for not updating in, like, two weeks, school has got me very busy. Big sad. Oof. A n y w a y s. Onto today’s topic!!! Rousseau, our favorite angsty boy, the epitome of “It’s not just a phase, Mom.” Honestly, though, Rousseau is an… interesting character, to say the least.

Unlike his peers at the time of the ~ Enlightenment period ~, Rousseau hated but also did what they did??? IDK, it’s confusing. He’s a hypocrite, but we’re not here to discuss that. Well, we kinda are?? But let’s just get to the philosophy.

He looked to the ~ state of nature ~ as a guide to LiFe, just like several other people of his day, ie Locke and Hobbes. Still, unlike Hobbes, he thought that “uNcOrRuPtEd MoRaLs” would prevail in the state of nature. But, unlike Locke, he also thought that society wasn’t that great.

Rousseau talks about the stages of human development, from the “brute animal” stage to the “decadent civilization” stage. Shockingly enough, he’s like “primitive man was great!!!” I mean, all the more power to him, but...uh. Yeah. It kind of makes sense, though, since he talks about how primitive men were both stupid enough to not be cruel, but also not dumb enough to be able to say “I’m not like the other animals.”

Rousseau actually was the OG environmentalist!! He believed that the more people deviated from this “primitive man” in the state of nature, the worse off humanity would be. He believed that men would be “noble savages” in the state of nature, and that instinct and emotion, when not distorted by ~ civilization ~, are nature’s vOiCe and are instructions to The Good Life™.

This “savage” stage was not the first s t a g e of human development, but rather, the third. He thought that this third savage stage of human societal development was an optimum. His view was that morality was not from society, but rather “innate”.

Our boi really valued “mediation”, which is the processes where individuals interact with themselves and others using alternative perspectives. These were developed through the “innate perfectibility” of humanity. Basically, he thought that one needs an alternative perspective to come to the realization that they are a “self”.

Society is a scourge because it transforms our “positive self-love” into “pride”. The positive sElF-lOvE is the instinctive desire for self-preservation combined with the human power of rEaSoN!!!!!!! Pride, though, is artificial, and encourages man to compare himself to others. This fuels unnecessary t o x i c competition.

Ironically, he argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, even if he is using the support of the “arts” to fuel his own art????? (Rou)sseau-metimes, I just don’t get him. Anyways, he argues that the arts and sciences have risen from pride and vanity. They are especially bad because they create opportunities for luxury and idleness, thus contributing to the ~ corruption ~ of man.

The progress of knowledge has crushed individual liberty, apparently, and material progress has undermined the possibility of true(?) friendship by replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion. I am confusion. Uhhh, but still, Rousseau says that society corrupts men only insofar as the Social Contract hasn’t succeeded.

In the very, very beginning, there was a society with minimal differences in wealth and status among families, so that there isn’t really any jealousy. If things stayed this way, it would have been fine. However, the rich and powerful made a flawed Social Contract (like the Hobbesian one...oof), which tricked the general population into surrendering their liberties and instituted inequality as a ~ fundamental ~ feature of human society.

As society developed, with the division of labour and stuff causing people to be dependent on each other, economic inequality was exacerbated and pressured people to undergo a ~ psychological ~ transformation. Since people need other people to like them, since they are interdependent, they began to see themselves through the eyes of others and came to value the good opinion of others as essential.

The only solution that he offered was to just cultivate??? Virtue??? And to submit to their lawful rulers. Basically, it was too late for this society and its Social Contract. Instead, people needed a new and more equitable Social Contract, even if he didn’t specify how that would come about or be made. Oof.

Uhh, that’s all! Thanks for reading!

it’s the state of nature in the boys’ locke-r room! ! !

Heyo!!! Today we are talking about yet another old guy!!!! As always. Y A Y . However, he’s pretty much got on /Locke/ the position as the * quintessential * old guy philosopher. If you haven’t guessed already, today we’ll talk about John Locke.

IDK about you, but whenever I think about Locke, I think of his ~ political ~ theory. Basically, it’s the idea of the social contract. Unlike yo boi Hobbes, Locke thought that human nature was reasonable. Still, people could still be selfish. Thus, he thought that, like, everyone should have a natural right to life, health, liberty, or property.

Locke really, really, valuedproperty. He thought that each person literally owned their own body, which means that other people can’t use people’s bodies for any purpose without their consent. However, people can still acquire property beyond one’s own body through labor. Still, Locke was a Nice Guy™, since he thought that in the state of nature, one must share their ~ surplus produce ~ with those less fortunate.

He defines the state of nature as the state of being without a contract and living outside of society. Unlike Hobbes (again), Locke thought the state of nature was good, since there was nothing constraining humans. H00man kind could be ~ completely free ~, as long as they are within the bounds of the law of nature (which is the right to life, liberty, and property?). The only problem, though, is that if each person doesn’t obey the law of nature, people have to punish the offender. In the state of nature, placing the right to punish can * probably * lead to injustice and violence, ie, there might be several violent Batmans running around.

To solve for this, people can enter a social contract. Although any type of contract is deemed ~ legit ~ if it doesn’t infringe upon the law of nature, there still needs to be a higher power to enforce the terms of the contract. Thus, society’s main duty is to set up a framework in which legit contracts (which are freely entered into) can be enforced, which is something that is much harder to accomplish in the state of nature.

If the government was not doing its “job”, Locke reserved the right of the people to revolt. Since the contract with society was willingly entered by the people, Locke thought that people should have the ability to y e e t out of society and back into the state of nature, especially because, in his opinion, the state of nature actually wasn’t that bad.

Another random theory that Locke had was that people are born with a “tabula rasa”. For the rest of us non-Latin speaking p l e b i a n s, basically, that means that people are born with a “blank mind”. To be fair, more than a few of us continue to have a blank mind to this day. UH. Anyways, this means that everybody would be shaped by their experiences as they grow up.

Combined with the idea that people aren’t ~ naturally ~ evil, this means that Locke believed that the good ol’ citizens of the society would not abuse their power (too much) and would peacefully live within the social contract, unless forced to do otherwise.

OK, that’s all, fOlKs!!!11! I don’t really have too much to say about John Locke, surprisingly enough, so I guess I’m going to c-Locke in for the day. Hehehehe.

Thanks for reading!

nietzsche has a neat-zsche philosophy!!11!11

Hey y’all! First of all, I’m really sorry about the late update. I mean...at least I ended up updating at least….? Even if the update is, like, 4 days late????? O O F. In my defense, I was really busy this week. I know that’s not an excuse, but for real, I’m super sorry :((((.

Anyways, today, we’re going to talk about Nietzsche! Or is it Neiztsche? IDK man, honestly, I’m going to have to google his name and then copy and paste it whenever I mention his name, because I truly can’t remember how to correctly spell his name for the life of me. Also, quick side note, does anybody know the right way to pronounce his name??? Is it “nee-chee” (rhyming with “lychee”) or “nee-chuh” (which is how I pronounce it)?????? These are the real questions we should be asking, people! ShEePlE wAkE uP!!!11!1!

….Yeah. Nietzsche was probably the most well-known for his harsh critiques of traditional European moral commitments, which relies on religious justifications. Not only was he doubting the vIaBiLitY of these ~ religious justifications ~, though, he was very aggressive about this, ie his very famous statement “God is dead.” It’s not that atheism is true, but instead, it’s that believing in God itself is “unbelievable.” The Christianity as a religion has become “mortal” - its ability to influence whole societies is slowly being lost.

Thus, the whole foundation for the conventional moral commitments is lost and even harmful. A big oof, though, is that, like, the ~ bad ~ part of morality has attached itself to us to the point that even if we Nietzsche try and break away from it, we can’t. The only response to this, according to our boi, is to try and investigate, dismantle, and reconstruct our way of life.

He kind of uses a historical analysis to see how this happens. Nietzsche talks about something called ressentiment where people who suffer from oppression are denied any revenge because of their powerlessness have a corrosive resentful hatred against their enemies. This leads to a new form of morality, where we have a ~ vindictive effort ~ to poison the happiness of others. Nietzsche concludes that suffering is an inevitable part of human condition, which is...depressing.

Also, he criticizes compassion! Y A Y . Nietzsche complains that a ~ morality ~ of compassion centers around the problem of suffering, and presumes that suffering is bad. Instead, he thinks that there are other values, independent of consequences for pleasures and pains. Moreover, he even says that suffering can even guide people’s growth. So, compassion runs the risk of ruining people’s chance to get something positive out of their suffering, and also, the global ~ hate ~ of suffering dismisses the potentially good parts of our existence as vulnerable/finite beings.

Nietzsche also has this “will to power doctrine,” which basically says that all life aims at the enhancement of their power, and that this means that enhanced power is good for everything. He uses this to argue that our basic condition as creatures can lead to a life that is worthy of endorsem*nt.

Umm, there’s this ~ eternal recurrence ~ idea that I don’t quite get, but will try to explain?? He kind of has this thought experiment to test whether one’s life is good or not. Basically, it imagines the endless return of life, and one’s emotional reaction to that reveals to how valuable one’s life has been.

Nietzsche describes his ideal guy (hehehe) by introducing the concept of the Übermensch. He says that this guy is the goal that humanity should strive towards. The Übermensch basically wants to give meaning to life on earth, in contrast to the other-worldliness of religion. The Übermensch embraces the earthly world with all its suffering, and basically avoids nihilism by feeling a great love of the world and life. The Übermensch is someone who doesn’t follow the sHeEpLe, and instead does their own sh*t. Yay for Übermensch and Über(wo)mensch?????

IDK guys. No hate :(

Thanks for reading!

going the extra baudri-llard

Hi! Today, we’ll talk about ~ Baudrillard ~, our favorite hyperreality boi. Sorry for the late update...again… I’ll probably just start updating every Wednesday now. It’s a better time for me * sweats *.

Baudrillarderino studies semiotics, which can be broken up into two things: the sign and the signifier. Signification is the meaning that is held within a sign. The sign, of course, has a literal and symbolic meaning. That sign can be even further broken up into 2 parts; the form of that sign is the signifier and the meaning of the form is the signified.

I know, it’s confused. You’re confused, I’m confused, we’re all confused. W h a t e v e r. An example that hopefully helps this make more sense would be the action of waving your hand???? The sign is representing a greeting, and the waving of your hand (the signifier) would be referencing to what that greeting would be (the signified).

However, Baudrillarboi criticizes the way that the new society has led to these two elements being reversed. That means that the signifier, the metaphysical representation, is preceding the signified, which is what the signifier is based on. Thus, any concept has lost its basis in reality.

Baudy bro calls the combination (of the signified and the signifier) a simulation. Simulation was, at first, supposed to be a representation of the physical entity. However, as time went on, as Baudrillard claims, those simulations grew further and further from reality until the image (the simulation) has lost all connection to reality. Instead, it becomes a simulacrum. Simulacra can be used to exchanged with other simulacra in a new plane separate from reality, the hyperreality. This is where Baudrillerdude incorporates anti-capitalism to his philosophy; the simulacra is all part of a capitalist market.

Uhhh, some examples of this would be like when you volunteer in a foreign country and take a picture with all the people in the village to post on social media, it almost seems like you care more on the “image” of volunteering rather than the charitable act itself.

Baudr-alert cares a lot about the media and its influences. He says that it has a ~ profound ~ control over reality, since it can basically construct whatever meaning it wants. If you look in the news today, you can see what he’s talking about. Bau-drilling outlines the 4 stages of simulation (which I probably should have talked about earlier, but here we are), and I can try and explain it??? With the example????

S O . First, the media takes an image that is a ~ referential ~ of the real thing. In this case, post 9/11, the media and people in the US in general took the image of the terrorist and applied it to brown bodies. Obviously, we know that terrorists are not uniquely brown, but the media started pasting that message everywhere.

Then, once they do that enough, we begin to disassociate from the image, and that fake image begins to become the ReAl. So, people now somehow believe that aLl TeRrOrIsTs ArE mIdDlE eAsTeRn and that they somehow have caused all the problems in the world, murdered every little puppy, and stole all the candy from the babies. You begin to see the breakdown of the real in the context of terrorism - although in the terrorist attacks that most directly affect America are hate crimes done by white people, other white people blame it on brown people. Yay, LoGiC!!!!1!!

After that, reality becomes the image. So, now we all think and treat terrorists as only brown people, so we dissolve the accuracies and connections to the real. Whenever we even think of the word “terrorist”, we now automatically think of someone trying to spread jihadism.

In the last step, the real becomes lost to us since we are all in the ~ hyperreality ~. The truth is no longer accessible, the sign refers back to itself as its signification, and everything we experience is just a simulation. RIP us. You can see how this has happened when people aren’t even able to name the purpose of the “war on terror”.

The only way to challenge this is through symbolically engaging in activities that rebel against the ~ system ~, or through challenging the system in a way that it can’t understand. For example, we can challenge the signs/signifiers that we are presented and point out how arbitrary they are. Honestly, I’m not quite sure how that will lead to the gReAt DeStRuCtIoN of the system, but then again, I’m kinda lost on this part of Baudrillard’s work, not going to lie oof.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

~ derri-da-viding ~ the english language

HIYA! Ahahahah guess who’s late in updating….again……. I’m so sorryyyyyyyyyy…...school’s a bitch. I’m probably dumb for not writing a bunch of these posts up ahead of time * sweats *. Anyways! Today, we’re going to talk about ~ Derrida ~. At first, I was going to make fun of him for looking like just another old philosopher guy, but…..damn he has nice cheekbones.

Basically, Derrida ~ philosophized ~ about something similar to Baudrillard’s concept of semiotics (and I’ll get to Baudrillard sometime IG???). Semiotics was made by this guy named Ferdinand de Saussure, whose last name, for some reason, looks like sausage. Is that just me??? Anyways, it’s essentially the study of signs and symbols in languages.

You have the sign, which is made up of 2 parts: the signifier and the signified. For example, if I wanted to greet someone, and I greeted them by waving at them, the signifier is the channel by which I convey my message, which is me waving my hand, while the signified is the meaning that is held behind the wave itself, which is me greeting someone. Then, you have the referent. It’s any kind of reference to some system that makes or gives the signified its meaning. This comes up a lot in Baudrillard’s works but, once again, we’ll get to that ~ later ~.

Derrida used semiotics to understand language through a philosophy of ~ deconstruction ~. As the name implies, he tried to tear down language to understand the meaning. He tore apart the signifier to understand the meaning of the signified.

Language is pretty flexible, since you can rearrange it to create new meaning. Uhh, it’s weird, though, since it’s also static in that it sometimes has unchanging connotations. Derrida uses fancy shmancy ~ words ~ to describe the phenomena he found.

The trace, for example, is the imagined production of a living breathing thing that is reduced to a Derrida-tive, a trace of its former glory. Creative, right? G e e . It has no physical form, but it is referenced. For example, the tracing could be the creation of a specter that is omnipresent in the sense of our discourse. It’s not really there, but it influences what we talk about.

Language, according to our boi, is so “full” that it negates the physical reality in favor of its own sprawling assumptions. This is where Baudrillard comes in. Like Baudrillard, Derrida thought that language lost its actual meaning because we have attached too many new associations.

He also uses the word “betray” to reference the hidden meaning in the language that we use. It can ~ betray ~ some kind of hidden feeling that we have whenever we use the words. For example, when you have to write an apology email to your teacher for forgetting to submit a paper on time, you have to find a way to keep whatever feeling you have (wHICH IS PANIC BECAUSE AN ANGRY MOM WILL MURDER YOU) from seeping into your words.

Derrida suggests that all the words have the ability to evoke various ~ specters ~ based off of the trace potentiality of different words. Boo-ring, right? Ahahahhaahah I want to die. As the “specters” thing suggests, Derrida titles his new idea “Hauntology”.

Specters alter the experience of reality. It can be created in different ways - history, representations, discourse, etc. The problem, though, is that these specters guide our action in an ~ inauthentic ~ way; we aren’t able to live life in almost an unbiased manner if that makes sense????

One example is from William Spanos’s book, American Specteralization in Globalization. Interesting book. Anyways, he talks about how the specter of Vietnam is haunting US foreign policy. Whenever we talk about conflict, or foreign policy, we are always haunted by our defeat in Vietnam. We are always unable to get over Vietnam, or accept it for what it is, and instead, we create more suffering, since we try to avoid the mistakes of the past (but fail) through our activities in the present. So, instead of taking action because of its own merits, we take action because of Vietnam’s specter.

Another example would be 9/11. Because of the shocking terrorist attack, its influences remain strong even up to today. It’s on that day the American government low-key redefined “terrorist” as “brown Muslims” (which is bullsh*t, JFC) and started the War on Terror. They always want to take revenge for that day, or avoid another event like that, so they take actions that may not be that rational.

You can get over the specter by ~ mourning ~ it. I didn’t really get this part???? But, it’s supposed to be a cathartic moment. You have to come to terms with that specter. IDK, man, it was kinda weird. My brain’s fried, no hate :((

Anyways, that’s all, fOlKs!!1!1! Gahh, I’m really sorry for not updating yesterday. I’m getting really busy because of school now, but I’ll still try to consistently update??? I don’t want to make excuses, so I’ll just try to get my sh*t together lmao. I’m probably publishing blasphemy, since this probably isn’t accurate, but this is what I got from reading, OK??? IDK MAN I’M DUMBBBB please let me know what I got wrong and educate this poor pleb….

Thanks for reading!

util is indisben(tham)sable!!11!!11

Jeremy Bentham (who surprisingly looks somewhat like Benjamin Franklin, as do all old white men) founded ~ utilitarianism ~. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically to maximize utility. “Utility” in this case means to produce happiness/pleasure and reduce pain/suffering.

UHH SO. He ~ arrives ~ at this conclusion through this reasoning: we are governed by feelings of pain and pleasure, so they decide what we will/ought to do. Apparently he calls those feelings our “sovereign masters”?? Which???? Uhhh??????? Is kinda weird????????? Whatever.

I guess it kind of makes sense, because we (mostly) like pleasure and dislike pain, and our boi Bentham just extrapolates that to make it the bAsIs oF mOrAl aNd PoLiTiCaL LiFe. He uses it as a principal for individuals and politicians.

On the individual level, well, the application of utilitarianism is kind of obvious. For example, if you’re trying to decide whether or not you should crawl out of your hermit hole to go to the grocery store and get basic sustenance, you have to weigh between the pleasure of your hunger being sated and the pain of meeting people you know but don’t want to talk to.

On the government level, it’s kind of similar. States have to do whatever will maximize the happiness of the community as a whole, the “community” being the citizens of the nation. Essentially, the legislators should think, if we add up the benefits of a policy and subtract the costs, will it produce more happiness than the alternative? Before you think that util is tr-util, you need to remember, this kind of thought process can be ~ complicated ~.

The one that immediately comes to mind is slavery. It could be justified by utilitarianism, since at the time, white people made up the majority of the population in the country, so they could be like “WoW gEe KiDnApPiNg aNd DeHuMaNiZiNg a MiNoRiTy oF tHe PoPuLaTiOn tO fOrCe tHeM tO wOrK fOr ThE mAjOrItY Is A gReAt IdEa!1!1!!!!” Of course, people could also argue that the harms of slavery would outweigh the short term “benefits” in the long run, since the racism/structural violence/mental trauma that resulted or was created because of it was simply too bad. Still, utilitarianism can, obviously, be a slippery slope.

Bentham says utilitarianism is the best simply because there are no possible grounds for rejecting it. He claims that every moral argument implicitly is based on the concept of maximizing happiness. For example, if people say they believe in certain absolute rights, Bentham would say they have no basis for defending these rights unless those people think respecting the rights would maximize human happiness in the long run. Basically, if you break down all moral arguments, they all are centered around arguing how to properly apply the utilitarian principle of maximizing utility.

One example of Bentham’s ~ utilitarian logic ~ is his plan to establish a self-financing workhouse for the poor. According to him, beggars on the street reduce the happiness of passerby by producing the pain of sympathy or disgust, which???? Uh no??? And, what’s even worse is basically he says we should remove beggars from the streets and confine them in a workhouse. That’s obviously messed up, since it violates the beggars’ rights just to spare the passerby whatever slight pain they may feel.

The lack of individual rights is one of the most glaring flaws of utilitarianism. As shown in the examples of slavery and the workhouse, obviously, utilitarianism doesn’t have any regard for personal rights. So, we should be careful when applying it in the real world.

Another weakness of utilitarianism is, well. How are we supposed to measure ~ happiness ~????? Evidently, people have different reactions to the same event; for one person, rubbing sandpaper can be excruciatingly painful, but for another person, it can be soothing. OK, IDK man, but the point I’m trying to make is that people don’t think the same way, so it’s difficult to make large, generalizing claims about the impact of decisions we make.

Hopefully(?), next week I’ll cover a variation of utilitarianism that attempts to address these flaws. Also, I’m really sorry for not updating for, like, a whole month. I was on vacation and I didn’t have internet, which was l i t e r a l t o r t u r e. Next time anything like this happens, I’ll try to post a notice, or something. Oof.

Thanks for reading!

u.s. ha-pan-s to be obsessed with china !

Hi, so uh I didn’t really know what I should write about this week. I was reading Chengxin Pan’s Knowledge, Desire, and Power in Global Politics. Yeah, I know, it’s pErFeCt ReAdInG fOr cHilLiNg On ThE bEaCh, but whatever. A friend recommended it to me, and I had some time, so I thought I might read it, and now gee oh gee, I get to fail while trying to summarize Pan’s Pan-derings on our relationship with China for y’all! ! ! ! Y a y !

So, Pan first identifies two paradigms in the general China IR community: China as an opportunity and China as a threat. The China threat paradigm encapsulates all those people out there talking about how cHiNa WiLl KiLl uS aLl. There are two sub-paradigms to this: capability-based CT discourses, which talks about how China has the capability to destroy us all, and intention-based CT discourses, which is generally about how Chinese nationalism or authoritarianism will spur it to threaten the West/US. The China opportunity paradigm describes all the literature talking about how China will be a great boon for Western/US markets, a great way to spread democracy, or a great integration to the “global community”.

I guess I’ll talk about CT first. So he says that the CT basically represent the colonial desire of the West and the fears it feels because China could now challenge the West’s hegemony. This fear is compounded by the fact that this fear is “unknown”, and thus, the West identifies the China as an “Other”. Through imagining China as an “Other”, the West is able to construct itself as good and civil in comparison to the ~ authoritarian and bAd ~ China.

In more material terms, CT has constructed China as a threat to replace the USSR in the post-Cold War era. It is necessary for the West to construct an evil enemy that is somewhere out there so that it can justify its own position as a “force for good in the world”. This also justifies military buildup, since people can now justify funding and creating their beloved weapons.

This CT is bad not only because it fuels the military-industrial-complex, but also because it already has predetermined China’s actions; neither China’s capabilities nor intentions truly seem to matter, since CT theorists emphasize their policy of attacking China while it’s still ~ weak ~. This means that CT will always be a self-fulfilling prophecy: since the West treats China hostilely, China, of course, will retaliate, thus justifying the CT theorists.

I’d go into more detail, but then I feel like I would ramble forever, so I guess now I’ll start talking about the CO paradigm. CO also results in the Othering of China. It portrays China as an attractive, but passive, Other that is ready to be exploited. It allows the West to use China as an opportunity to improve Western access to China’s markets, rather than enhancing Chinese access to other markets.

The CO global integration sub-paradigm also treats China in this way; it assumes that before joining the ~ rest of the world ~, China wasn’t part of the world (like, do these people think that China somehow was on another planet beforehand???), or that China still hasn’t even been able to join yet, so China is represented as an “opportunity” for democracy. And the emphasis on democratizing China in and of itself is also problematic, since it believes that China has to move “closer” to “us”, which means that China is considered as inferior. This is ethnocentric, since CO theorists assume that China will only develop according to the Western subjectivity.

The core assumption of CO is that they believe that China is a reflection of the West. The CO believes think that as long as they “Pan-der” to their idealized version of China, then China will follow in the West’s footsteps. They place the West at the apex of modernity, in an active, dominant position, while they place China at the inferior stage of societal and political development, as the passive object in need of the wEsT’s hElP.

However, this way of expecting that China will be democratized and submissive is bad. The more the West/US tries to force their beliefs/democracy onto China, the less pro-West it will be. Instead, China, as the attempted(?)-colonized, will become an intimate enemy of the (attempted(?????)) colonizer, which is the West.

Moreover, in general, CO theorists hold China to unrealistic standards. They say that China must become the idealized version of the West - which is honestly ridiculous, since (according to their own beliefs that West >> China) if the West hasn’t achieved true equality for everybody, then how can China, this supposedly backwards and conservative country, achieve those goals?

There also are the ~ edgier ~ CO theorists, who now feel disillusioned after China hasn’t ha-Pan-edtheir every demand. They have now shifted paradigms from CO to CT. Since they think that their engagement with China has been fruitless, they discredit their previous paradigm and instead advocate for cracking down on China, which has been a “dIsApPoInTmEnT”.

Pan criticizes these paradigms and instead advocates for first critically self-reflecting on our own preconceived biases. Only through discarding these ~ wild ~ expectations that we have of China can we finally have constructive dialogue about (and with) China which - uhhhh hopefully - will be grounded on actual observations of China. Of course, this won’t be easy, both because CO and CT are such huge parts of the China IR community and because of the language/cultural barrier. However, even if we don’t know how this will Pan out, we still need to try and reach for the meaningful construction of moral knowledge.

As always, thanks for reading! Bye.