Category Archives: Philosophy

Is there a time and a place for the good Samaritan?

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I was told of the social experiment below by an American Priest. As he told it it had a very clear message about our priorities. And it struck me because this is a message I was brought up with, but also a message that my experience has led me to reject. What do you think?

100 Priests in various locations were told to teach the parable of the good Samaritan (where 2 Jewish religious men passed by a man in need, but a Samaritan, believed to be less good than the Jews, stopped to give help). 50% of the priests were given a new time last minute, so that they had to rush to their classes. And along the way for every person was an actor pretending to be in need of help. The experiment showed that we are far less likely to help when in a rush, and the message behind the story is that we need to re-order our priorities such that we do take time to help, even if that interferes with other parts of our schedule. Do you agree? Or like me do you believe there was a weakness in this argument?

How do you decide what’s possible, or how far you can be pushed?

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Quantum science teaches us that at the Planck level i.e. the smallest level, there is only potential – pure abstractness. Whether this ‘universal field’ is consciousness or information or something else, this knowledge suggests that all things imaginable are possible, and some think actual. But is that helpful when we’re thinking about our own actions?

I’ve often talked about balance on this blog. And perhaps no one can determine their own optimal balance, in terms of how far they can be pushed, and what they’re capable of, other than themselves. I’m training to do a marathon at the moment, and that requires me to make many decisions about when to rest and when to push myself. But how should I make such decisions? Stop if I’m ever in pain? If we all did that nobody would do anything. But of course there does come a point when I must stop.

Have we got the potential to do anything, as information seems to in quantum physics? Are we in fact in thousands of different places at once, in some places giving up, and in others pushing ourselves on? Or is the quantum world so divorced from our ‘big’ reality, that we can only use our finite amount of knowledge, the opportunities we’re presented with and our finite ability to persevere through pain until we just have to give in? How do you make such decisions?

Is Capitalism equivalent to theft?

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Imagine that in an apocalypse scenario where this is possible, you walk into the woods to make your life anew. You spend weeks finding the right spot, and then months of hard work building a house. Towards the end of your labours a rather seedy looking man with a rifle comes and watches you work. You toil day and night while this person watches on, sat on a nearby log and occasionally using his rifle to shoot deer. Eventually you finish, and you look back on your work with a smile, when all of a sudden you hear the cocking action of a rifle.
“Thanks. Now be on your way” says the seedy looking man.
To Locke, such an an action is inherently wrong; it goes against all notions of natural justice, since people should own the product of their labour.

Using exactly the same argument Marx later said that Capitalism is theft, since under this system you don’t own the product of your labour. He wrote for example about a political debate that was happening at the time. Reformers argued to restrict the number of working hours in the day, whilst capitalists argued that doing so would restrict the potential for profit. Now to Marx this would be good, since profits are viewed as relating to surplus value. For example if you produce enough in 4 hours to cover the resource and labour costs then all value produced thereafter is surplus. It no longer benefits the worker, only the owner of the capital. And thus it fails the liberal, Lockian test of allowing workers to benefit from the toil of their own labour. Furthermore capitalism inevitably worsens this margin according to Marx i.e. as businesses grow workers become able to produce more in the same time, and yet are still required to work long hours due to competitive forces and the need for profit.

In arguing along such liberal lines, and using capitalism’s own logic to undermine it, does Marx have a point? Is Capitalism theft?

Can life be valued?

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It’s difficult to choose between 2 projects if one saves lives and the other does not. Can/should you quantify such things? Can/should a value be placed on life? And if so can/should further values be attributed to preventing injuries?

And if you want to take it even further still then imagine this scenario: you’re forced to choose only 5 countries that will survive a terrible apocalypse. Would you place equal value on each life and choose the most populous countries? Or would you reason otherwise? Might you for example reason that if you’re thinking about the living then it’s best to save the 5 happiest countries, so that the future is a better world? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Does truth matter?

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The way a person thinks says a lot about someone. And yet there are a great deal of commonalities between us all in this. We think about outcomes. If someone asks you what they should do my bet is that you probably reply with a question designed to seek their objectives. This is pragmatism in the style of philosophers such as Dewey. But for most of history we thought quite differently. For instance the ancient Greeks and middle ages thinkers would ask which course of action best reflects or discovers the truth. If this was deemed logical for most of human history does it still have logic today? Should truth be a constant aim? Or should we always be pragmatic?

Is man fallen (in sin)?

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St Augustin said that man was born into sin and incapable of saving ourselves I.e going from the city of man to the city of god without being lifted there by God. Sounds quite radical no the face of it. But there was a lot of reason in his argument. In today’s language one would probably say that man is selfish because we try to make the world in our image. We view things subjectively, not objectively. And we are not capable of standing behind rawl’s veil of ignorance. Put in such a modern way would you be inclined to agree or disagree with Augustin’s assessment?

Is an Aristotelian polity a realistic or feasible system?

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Unlike Plato, who dreamed of an authoritarian system of government ruled over by elite “guardians”, Aristotle said that there are 3 forms of government: rule by the one, rule by the few and rule by the many. But unlike today where we say one is better than the other, Aristotle said that there is a good and bad form of each. Indeed he said that the best form of government would combine all three types, which you could say representative democracy seeks to do to some extent. But the point relevant to this debate is that the ‘bad’ form of rule by the many according to Aristotle was called democracy, which he called bad because it creates a tyranny of the majority whereby the majority rules at the expense of the minority. The good form was called a polity, which would seek to include and account for all people, not just the majority.

But is such a notion – that of a polity – realistic? Or is it merely naive to think such a state of affairs truly possible?

The group, the individual and Plato’s Republic

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I have to say, I’m not amazingly impressed with Plato’s Republic, now reading it for the first time. Logic is all very well. But without the more Aristotelean empiricism used by people making arguments today, they continually seem to miss key arguments, make questionable assumptions, and brush over topics that have taken entire lives of dedication as if they were children discussing what’s their favorite meal.

Now if you know Plato’s philosophies, and you know me (essentially a postmodern democratic reformist) then it may come as no surprise to you to hear me disagree with Plato, and supposedly Socrates too, since he was the subject of most dialogues in the book. Plato’s philosophies echo the Spartan constitution far more than the Athenian. And they have been said to be the ideological root of totalitarian states like fascist Italy and Germany, as well as the USSR.

However there is one area on which I agree with Plato. He argues that when everyone lives completely individual lives and we always think about ourselves rather than the group then we create unjust societies in which unhappiness is widespread. He pursues the other extreme of course. But is it not true that one of the most unquestionable bedrocks of Western society is the primacy of the individual? Especially given recent advances in group psychology and evidence about how group membership affects well being, shouldn’t we start re-questioning whether we might be going a little too far?

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