Epictetus' Basic Argument

Here I explain the basic argument in Epictetus' Handbook as well as link to another site where I discuss the argument in some detail.

The main point is that in order to live a good life, we should try to bring our own feelings and desires in line with the universe.  Recall that Epictetus says that just as a target is set up to be hit, the world is ordered well and in a just manner, meaning that nothing bad happens in the world.  Because it seems that in order to be happy we must have things go the way we want, and we cannot make anything go the way we want except our own thoughts and feelings, we should only try to control our own feelings and should either want nothing or want everything to be exactly as it is. 

Stoic philosophy has applications in mental health and can help people to deal with trauma.  This link to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) explains how cognitive therapy embraces some of the same principles of stoicism in a way to help people deal with various disorders.   

Links Links Links!

The following links discuss our first reading, Plato's Euthyphro:

What is pious?

Defining Piety

Euthyphro's Dilemma

These links cover Apology:

Defiant Defense

Two Links about Socrates' Counterassessment and his thoughts on death.

Marder on Plants

Marder thinks that plants should have the right to flourish and the right to be free of arbitrary violence. The basis for these rights is plant subjectivity or agency. In other words, plants have a basic ability to actively shape their environments. As such, they should have certain rights. Plant intelligence studies seem to undermine Singer's justification of vegetarianism because it shows that just because someone avoids eating animals does not yet mean that one is eating ethically. Plants, as something with their own kind of subjectivity, seem to be just as deserving of rights as animals are. Just because they have rights does not entail that they also have responsibilities. We might have obligations to plants even if plants are not the kind of thing to have their own obligations. It may even turn out that all eating is unethical. If this is the case, then this is not to say that we should stop all eating. Rather, the question of whether we should eat is akin to the question of whether we should exist. Marder says that the easiest rule for respectful eating is to remember that the sources of our food are not just calories for human consumption. There is some sort of 'good' for that plant (or animal) itself. 

Kantian Animal Ethics

In this essay, Korsgaard begins by noting the unstable attitudes that we have towards animals. On the one hand, we seem to agree that it is wrong to inflict pain on an animal or to kill an animal without good reason. On the other hand, it seems like any reason other than mere enjoyment is a good reason to harm or kill an animal. Korsgaard notes that generally, those who want to argue for better treatment of animals will often emphasize the similarities between humans and non-humans whereas those who want to defend the status quo will emphasize the difference between humans and non-humans. Korsgaard will follow neither of these tactics. Instead, she thinks that there is a big difference between humans and non-humans and that it is because of this difference that we ought to treat animals better.

What is the difference between humans and non-human animals? Humans have a capacity for reflective self-awareness. We don't merely act on instinct--we think about our actions and have the capacity to choose to act other than our instincts drive us. Although Korsgaard seems to be open to the possibility that some non-humans have a rudimentary level of self-awareness, humans seem to be rationally and reflexively aware of their own consciousness in a way that other animals are not. Hume seems to think that this difference means that we have no obligations to animals whatsoever. Kant thinks that although we have no obligations to animals, we should treat animals well as a duty to ourselves and other rational beings. In short, Kant thinks that to ignore the suffering of animals is to dull our capacity for sympathy and empathy. To treat animals well is a sort of practice to treat humans well. Because animals are analagous to humans in some ways, we should treat animals well in order to keep up our capacity to care about other people.

Korsgaard on Agency

In this article, Korsgaard is concerned with agency. Agency is the ability to perform actions. Someone who can perform actions is an agent. Korsgaard describes two different kinds of theories about agency: the normative account and the natural account. On the natural account, an action is just what happens when there is a causal relationship between a belief and a behavior. This is a purely descriptive account. The normative account of agency is not purely descriptive. On the normative account, an action only happens if the agent's beliefs and actions are organized in a certain way. For example, Plato's account of agency includes the theory that an action is performed only if one's rational capacity is in control of the other parts of the person (spirit and appetite). Kant's account of agency includes the theory that an action is performed only when an agent reflectively considers the axiom that is guiding his action and then proceeds only if the axiom can be made universal law. Korsgaard thinks that any natural account of agency must also be supplemented with a normative account because only a normative account of agency can explain two implications that arise when we attribute agency.

When we attribute agency to someone, Korsgaard says there are two resulting implications. First, it seems like an action is somehow expressive of who a person is and the agent has some kind of ownership over his or her actions. She calls this the identity implication. In other words, actions express the identity of a person. Second, actions can fail in a way that simple causal linkages cannot. For example, the action of dodging a ball has a goal of avoiding being hit by a ball. Even if I move my body in response to a belief or desire, my action has failed if my goal has not been met. Korsgaard calls this the activity implication. Only a normative account of agency can help to explain these two implications.

Leopold's Land Ethic

Leopold wants to think about ethics in evolutionary terms. His background is as a biologist. Philosophically speaking, an ethic is what distinguishes social from anti-social behavior. In other words, an ethic says what you should and should not do. Ecologically speaking, an ethic is a restriction on individual behavior in the struggle for life. Leopold says that the sequence of ethical evolution is to recognize a broader range of entities as being morally relevant. For example, in the history of Western Civilization, women and various other minorities were, at one point or another, thought to be morally irrelevant. Many humans were once considered property. Property issues are not moral issues. But just as we now recognize that women and minorities are not property, Leopold thinks that we have good reason to think of land as more than property. Land has moral value even if we do not love, respect or admire it.

What is the basis of the value of the land? Leopold describes what he calls the land pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is the soil. Plants live on the soil, insects live on the plants, rodents and birds live on the plants, and smaller predators live on birds, rodents and plants. Apex predators occupy the top of the pyramid, as they are consumed by no other creatures. Beings near the top feed off of beings lower on the pyramid. Beings at the bottom are nourished by the decaying matter of higher species. Leopold says that the way this biological community functions is like an energy circuit. Energy (nutrition, calories) transfers from the lower levels to the higher levels and back down. Natural and native species keep this energy circuit open. Sometimes, invasive or introduced species interrupt this energy circuit. For example, the kudzu vine will cover all native plant species and rob them of energy from the sun. When local plants die, local insect populations do not get appropriate nutrition. Hence, local rodent and bird populations suffer, as well. Eventually, this domino effect reaches apex predators. Whereas natural changes in biological communities are slow and local, man-made changes are fast and large-scale.

Humanity can either think of itself as a conqueror over nature or as in community with nature. Leopold says that attempts to be conquerors will be self-defeating because true domination and control require perfect knowledge of how nature functions. Because we lack this perfect knowledge, we cannot control nature. Also, a long history of attempts to control nature show that our scientific and technological efforts are often met with negative consequences that are neither foreseen nor intended. As such, we should recognize that just as species within a biological community have co-evolved in order to function as a larger system, we are also part of the biological community. We are not masters of nature. We are in community with natural systems and species.

Foot's Defense of Morality

Follow this link to read a previous blog post.

Nietzsche Links

First Essay

Second Essay

Third Essay

Carnap: What is the Meaning of This?!?!

Carnap's target is metaphysics.  The metaphysical is what is beyond or behind reality.  For example, 'God' refers to a metaphysical concept because divinity is thought to be beyond reality or behind our empirical experience of the world.  Carnap says that the sentences of metaphysics are not properly speaking claims.  Rather, the pseudo-statements of metaphysics only appear to make claims.  In other words, the sentences of metaphysics are meaningless (or nonsense).

Metaphysics is related to value theory because any normative theory about the way things should be or about the way things ought to be isn't making descriptive claims.  Ethics and other normative theories of value (such as aesthetics--the study of what is beautiful) make claims about how things should be.  Claims about the way things should be are thought to do logically distinct from claims about the way things are.

According to Carnap's logical, scientific approach to language, words and sentences only have meaning of those meanings can be intersubjectively verified in an empirical way.  Sentences can fail to be meaningful if the words themselves lack meaning or if the words are arranged in a way that violates the ideal rules of grammar.  For example, Carnap would say that the claim, "God is good." is meaningless because the words 'God' and 'good' do not have an empirical definition that can be observed and verified by other people.  The sentence, "Caesar is and." is meaningless because the word order violates the rules of grammar.  'Caesar' is the subject, 'is' is a copula (coupling word) used to express a relation between a subject and predicate (a predicate is what is applied to the subject), but 'and' is not a predicate.  'And' is a conjunction (joining word).  'Caesar is a prime number' has a predicate ('prime number' applied to the subject ('Caesar'), but the predicate is the wrong class of predicate to apply to a person.  Thus, the sentence is meaningless.

For the purposes of this class, we are most concerned with the distinction between normative claims and descriptive claims.  According to Carnap, normative 'claims' are actually pseudo-statements that have no meaning and hence no truth value.

A Mother's Sacrifice

Here is a story about a woman who literally got in the way of a moving vehicle to protect her children.  How would Mill evaluate the morality of her sacrifice?  What about Kant?

Utilitarianism and Justice, Other Links

Mill, as an advocate for social reforms that benefit women and the poor, thinks that questions about social justice must always be answered in terms of social utility.  In other words, questions about what makes a society just and fair are questions about who is benefited most by certain policies.  For example, slavery would only benefit a certain group of people.  The enslaved class is not able to maximize pleasure.  Because all pleasure matters equally, a policy that only considers the pleasures of some is unjust.  Social progress is made when we recognize that what may seem like a useful social institution (slavery, lack of women's suffrage, etc.) is actually oppressing certain groups of people.  Ultimately, questions about whether slavery is just are questions about whether slavery could maximize universal utility within a society.

Here are links to Basic Utilitarianism and the Proof for the Greatest Happiness Principle.

Reading Skills Activity

In this article, the author looks at 7 sentences that may sound meaningless but that are perfectly grammatical according to the rules of the English language. 

Reading this article may be a fun way to start practicing your own reading skills.  If you can make sense of each sentence in this article, then you are a good reader!

More on Kant's Ethics

This post is all about the categorical imperative!

This post is about the difference between acting from duty and acting merely in accord with duty.

This post is all about perfect and imperfect duties.

In this post, I briefly explain the kingdom of ends.

Kant's Ethics Explained

The basis of Kant's ethics is a good will.  The good will is the only thing that is good without qualification.  It is also the highest good.  It is good not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.  Compare this with intelligence.  Being smart is good for lots of reasons; it can help to achieve many ends.  But being smart can also be used for bad goals, such as robbing a bank or assassinating someone and getting away with it.  Unlike intelligence, the good will is always good.  It is good not because it brings about some consequences but because it wills correctly.  Actions are good actions if they are actions of a good will.

But how do we tell if an action is an action of a good will?  Well, we text the maxim, or the personal rule according to which a person was acting.  Another name for a maxim is a principle of volition.  The idea is this.  For every action, there is some personal rule that a person is following.  In order to test if this maxim is good, we must use a certain kind of test for this rule.

The test we use is the Categorical Imperative.  The categorical imperative states that one should only act according to rules that can be made into universal law.  For some rules, it is logically impossible to make them a universal law.  For example, if you wanted to make "It is ok to tell a lie whenever you want" a universal rule, this would be logically impossible.  Lying means telling someone falsehoods under the pretense that they are truths.  In other words, lying means telling someone something false under the assumption that they will believe your words anyway.  If everyone lied whenever they wanted to, then nobody would ever believe anyone.  Lying would be impossible because lying requires that the person to whom you are lying believes your lies.

Here is another example.  Say I am in a hurry at Starbucks and I want to cut in line.  So I act according to the maxim, "It is ok to cut in line when I want".  If this rule became a universal law and everyone cut in line whenever they wanted, then lines would cease to exist.  If the rule became universalized, then it would become logically impossible to follow that rule.  The point is not just that it would be an impractical rule to be universalized.  Rather, it would be logically impossible to universalize this rule because if everyone followed it, then following it would become impossible!

Epictetus' Practical Advice

In this post, I discuss some of the specific examples of concrete advice Epictetus uses.

Kant Vocab

Here is a post where I discuss some vocabulary from Kant's text.  Stay strong, people!

Epictetus's Basic Argument

Here I link to a previous post about the basic argument in Epictetus' Handbook. 

Yet Another Song about Stillness

Peace and quiet seem to be very valuable to Plato.  Epictetus will similarly value calm and stillness.  In fact, Epictetus will say that the goal in life is to be calm and serene.  In this song, the narrator talks about her efforts to bring herself that quietude and peace.  Unfortunately, her efforts to understand the world in a logical way are unsuccessful.  The song text, originally in German, is translated (by me) below:

Prologue: "Daily I talk to myself about my life as if it were a subway system map.  Out of above without no floor, without silence, restless, never without advice, never speechless.  I only lack the words...

"I try to explain to myself the world as if it were between two points on a line, as if words divided the world into stripes.  I grasp but I do not apprehend.   What use are my hands to me when what they touch disappears just as things become mute and silence is wrested from them when words are found? 

I am no stiller.  I only fail to have the words.  I am no stiller, only the words fail to reach their goal.  I am no stiller.  I would enjoy so much to be silent, and still, so much stiller and only to show things and to be shown, still and dazzling.

I try to explain to myself the world as if it were between two cable lines, as if the words could only be stripes according to which I grasp and yet cannot apprehend. 

What use are beautiful thoughts which sink between everything else?  Because the heart is the sinker of all thoughts.  Because everything that you find is gone."    

Whereas the narrator in this song is unable to find an underlying logical structure in her world, Epictetus is able to find his peace and quiet because he believes that the world is ordered in a just way.  The narrator expresses a desire for "stripes according to which I grasp and yet cannot apprehend".  When reading Epictetus, consider how he might use a simile like this to explain the universe.  Does he think that the world is divided up into neat little stripes which although we may grasp, we do not apprehend?

Rhymesayers on Romance and Serenity

If you like good rap and hip hop (and I mean, like, actually good), or if you just like good music in general, I highly recommend artists from
Rhymesayers Entertainment.  As it turns out, many tracks of these socially and self-aware artists relate to themes, questions and issues from the class.

In this track, "551", modern rapper, writer and philosopher Dessa (of the Doomtree collective) contemplates the ways we try to bring ourselves calm and quiet.  Two themes emerge in this track: love and drugs.

How would Socrates respond to a song like this?  Would he think that the kind of peace that people gain from romantic relationships or martinis is valuable?

To help think of reasons why one should perhaps not depend on a romantic relationship to bring serenity, check out this track from Grieves, another artist on the Rhymesayers label.  In this track, called, "Scar Gardens", the narrator warns a romantic partner, 'I am not your paradise'.

I Know it's not Christmas Time, But...

Many of us will recognize the classic Christmas song "Silent Night" (originally written in German).  This song seems to celebrate some of the same values that Plato finds important: being still, silent and peaceful.  Plato praises sleep for being a time of quiet and peace.  Unlike waking hours, which can be full of hazards and harms, dreamless sleep in particular is completely void of any upset, dismay, pain or discomfort.

Recall how Crito seems envious of Socrates' peaceful sleep.  Also recall that Socrates thinks that a dreamless sleep may be very similar to death insofar as both are a total lack of perception.

Give me Free Food or Give me Death

In these two posts, I discuss Socrates counter-assessment of an appropriate punishment and his thoughts on death. 

Apology Day 1

In this post, I outline Socrates' general strategy at his trial.  In short, he gives a very defiant defense of his life. 

Euthyphro Day 2

Here is a blog post where I explain the various different definitions of 'pious' in Euthyphro.

In this one, I explain the consequences of either solution to Euthyphro's dilemma.

In class today, I talked about the importance of conditional statements, such as "If P, then Q", or "If something is pious, then it is loved by the gods".  Conditional statements can be used to express causal relationships (e.g., If it rains, then the sidewalk gets wet).  We can also use conditional statements to express the relationship between genus and species: all poodles are dogs, all squares are rectangles and all OC citizens are CA citizens.  Conditional statements are important in philosophy.  Consider this argument:

If you are in Irvine, you are in CA.

Las Vegas is not in CA.

Therefore, Las Vegas is not in Irvine

The first premise of this argument is a conditional statement.  Many arguments include conditional statements.  

Consider now the logical form called 'introduction of a biconditional':  

If P, then Q.  

If Q, then P.  

Therefore, P if and only if Q.  

This is a valid logical form that can be used to express a vicious circle.  The problem with a vicious circle is not that it is illogical.  Rather, vicious circles fail to provide any new information.

Euthyphro, Day 1

Hello! For previous blog posts about Euthyphro, please follow this link or this other link.

Plato's Euthyphro is all about piety.  Socrates asks Euthyphro (the title character) what it means to be pious.  In general, to be pious means to be respectful and reverent towards divinity.  Socrates rejects the first three definitions provided for various reasons (see blog posts above).  


During discussion we considered whether we might avoid these kinds of criticisms by defining what is pious in terms of either 1) the intention of the person performing a pious act or 2) conditions for piety relative to a specific god.  In the case of 2, then we reject Socrates' desire for a single form or single conceptual definition for piety.  In the case of 1, then it seems like we avoid contradictions unless the person performing the action has contradictory intentions (e.g., slaughtering an animal is meant to appease one god while simultaneously defying another.  However, if we join both of these conditions together, we can avoid contradiction.  However, Socrates is likely to reject this notion because it does not provide a single unified definition of piety.

At this point, we might consider whether all definitions need to be unified in such a manner...