World of Forms, Part 2

As I said yesterday, Plato ascribes beauty as the relationship of one thing to the form upon which is it based. The closer it is to the pure form, the more beautiful it is.

I agree with this, but I want to add something as well. It seems to me that beauty is a subjective thing when it comes down to it. Things that I find beautiful are much different than things that other people find beautiful. Additionally, the things that people find beautiful are constantly changing, that is, what people might find beautiful today may not be what they find beautiful tomorrow.

So how do we rectify having beauty be subjective while having a world of forms? I believe that each person has, due to a combination of nature and nurture (i.e. genetics and environment), their own world of forms that they create. Additionally, this world is constantly in flux. This makes a lot of sense to me, especially when you think about childhood development. Children will commonly group things together until told otherwise. For example, a small child might call a cow a dog, because it sees that the cow has four legs and a small tail, just as a dog does. However, once corrected, the child will then understand the difference between cow and dog, and thus the two forms are distinguished in his or her mind.

Of course, Plato could come back and say that beauty is not subjective, that there is only one world of forms, and those who disagree with the beauty of the real world of forms are not actually seeing beauty. But to me this seems poppycock: every single person has different perceptions of beauty, and as much as Plato liked to play up the importance of philosophers, we are not that important and all knowing I have to admit. If there is an objective beauty, it would be extremely difficult to determine what it would be, seeing as in a real world application there are so many different opinions. I do not think that simply because Plato was a philosopher did he know what the real world of forms was like and thus know "real" beauty.

World of Forms, Part 1

So I'm going to stray off the elitist path for a while to discuss, mainly because I'm not getting anywhere substantial with my theory. Instead, I'm going to discuss Plato, mainly his idea of the world of forms. Today I'll give a brief summary and tomorrow I'll discuss my opinion of this view.

Plato believes that everything in the world is merely a copy of some greater, grander perfect idea of that given thing. For example, all cats are merely copies of this perfect idea of "catness", or the perfect "cat." Also, all chairs are merely copies of the perfect idea of "chairness", or the perfect "chair." He uses the analogy of the cave to explain this. Imagine you are chained to a wall, with your back to the wall, in such a fashion that you cannot turn around. Between you and the wall there is a fire (that does not hurt you in any way shape or form - it's far enough away). Between you and the fire are all the perfect images of the world, such that all you see are the shadows of these images on the wall in front of you. This is the way the real world is. We only see shadows of the true perfect things, and these true and perfect things are all kept in the world of forms.

Now he takes this one step further and says that beauty is a property of items based on their closeness in perfection to the perfect idea. For example, the closer a chair is to the perfect idea of chair, the more beautiful it is. This is the point that I will argue tomorrow.

It's been a while....

So it's been a while since I posted, and a lot has happened, mainly, people have commented on my blog. I've read them all, and I really wanted to respond to two of the comments.

First off is this one, posted by a former professor of mine (named Vole here) about the ice cream scoop situation. "It's not so clear to me that the elitist will go for five scoops at once. It depends on what we're being elite about. If the elitist ideal is to strive for the best life overall, then a scoop a day is likely to be better (because of diminishing marginal returns, you get more overall utility by spreading it out.) Only if an elitist insists the aim is peak happiness within a life, rather than the best life overall, will 5 today, none tomorrow be the way to go. We could insist on the latter interpretation of elitism - but why?"

Well, the main thing is I wish to be a more pure elitist, and choosing the former in your comment is being more of an average elitist. As long as the average of the lifetime has the highest peak value, it's the best. To me, this is dissatisfying. I would much prefer having a life with a single peak moment that far outshines any other moment. So until it comes to my attention that this stronger view has a huge problem with it (other than the problems already associated with any sort of elitist view) then I will attempt to propone it.

Additionally, Mathieu made some comments about sacrifice, saying that I was incorrect in my usage of the term. He says "to sacrifice means to give up a value for a disvalue." First of all, I'm not entirely certain that this is true due to the fact that value is a scale, not a dichotomy. You can have two things that you value, but you might value one of them moreso than the other. In choosing to do the one that you value less, it's not choosing a disvalue, it's simply choosing something that you value less. If this is what you meant by disvalue, I apologize, but I think of disvalue as something that is not valued at all. So to me, then, a sacrifice is choosing something of less value in your life over something of more value to you when you are presented with both options. And so in my example (in which I stipulate that the test is very important), the student values football (or whatever sport he might wish to play) more than he values studying. So when he chooses studying over football, he is making a sacrifice.

Reading Plato

I'm taking a break for a few days on the blog in case you didn't notice. Reading some Plato (the original elitist). Additionally, life is getting busy.

Which is preferred?

I was recently talking with a friend of mine, and I was attempting to explain my theory. I found a rather apt analogy for it.

Imagine you have won a prize: 5 scoops of ice cream. For the sake of the argument, let's say that 5 scoops is exactly the amount to fill you up (i.e., you won't get overly stuffed by eating 5 scoops at once but instead will be quite satisfied). Now you have a choice. You may either have one scoop of ice cream every day for 5 days or you may have 5 scoops of ice cream at once (remember that 5 scoops of ice cream will not make you feel disgusting). Which do you choose?

In talking with my friend, I found that I was clearly of a mindset to have 5 scoops of ice cream at once, and this is the sort of choice that elitism propones. It has a very high peak value at one point by sacrificing having anything at any other time. It's kind of a "go out with a bang" mentality, or as another of my friends would say, "go big or go home."

Now let's change the example slightly. Let's say that your second option is now to give one scoop of ice cream each to four other people (keeping one for yourself). Also, let's stipulate for this argument that the combined happiness/joy/wellbeing/whathaveyou of all five people having one scoop of ice cream is lower than that of you having 5 scoops of ice cream. To put numbers to it, let's say you eating 5 scoops of ice cream gives you a wellbeing of 6 and each person would get a wellbeing of 1 by eating one scoop of ice cream, thus totalling 5 (which is less than 6, of course). Now which do you choose?

The elitist (and myself) would still propone eating all 5 scoops yourself, especiallys ince even though the total of spreading out the ice cream is 5, it's actually 5 instances of a wellbeing of 1, which is far less desirable in an elitist's eyes. This seems plausible to me. However, I may be a bit biased.

Capitalism and Selfishness

Capitalism promotes selfishness. At least, when you really take it to heart and don't temper it with any other ideals.

Capitalism, at least a bare-bones description of capitalism, allows for capital and all sorts of wealth to be controlled privately: the state has no say over pricing, production, etc. In this form, capitalism leads to selfishness. It is much easier to gain capital and increase production when there is no concern for other people and their wellbeing. For example, monopolies are the epitome of a successful capitalistic venture: complete and utter control over a market segment.

I think this might be a contributing factor in my own personal selfishness when it comes to sacrificing my wellbeing for those who already have a higher wellbeing than I. In the american society in which I live, it is considered good practice to be at least a little bit selfish (at least in the economic world). However, there's a fine line to walk between being selfish and fair, because, thankfully, america's capitalistic economy is tempered by a number of other factors.

This doesn't really help much in the nature/nurture debate, because one could argue that capitalism is merely an expression of human nature's innate selfishness. Conversely, it could be argued that humans are innately unselfish and that capitalism is merely the result of some sort of perversion of human nature. Again, this is merely speculation and doesn't really help anything.

Where does it come from?

The other day I considered the fact that my reticence to lower my own wellbeing for an increase in someone's wellbeing who was higher than mine was comprised mostly of jealousy and/or selfishness. So where does it come from? Well, that's the age old question: nature or nurture?

Is it really human nature to be jealous and selfish of those who are more fortunate than we are? When I think about it, it might be. Consider those people who are NOT selfish and jealous, such as Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. (although some might argue me on the latter). If indeed it is human nature to be selfish and jealous, then these two would have not been so due to nurturing, and it seems like they had very nurturing upbringings. Mother Theresa was raised a devout Roman Catholic, and the religion does lend itself, if followed truly, to a sacrificial, non-selfish, non-jealous lifestyle. (Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Theresa for more info on Mother Theresa, she's a cool cat). Dr. King was also raised as a devout to a christian religion (in his case, Baptist), and so he learned to be self-sacrificing, loving, giving, etc.

This is an interesting theory, but it doesn't really have any credence to it since I'm just speculating. Tomorrow I'm going to pursue a nurturing view of how we become selfish/jealous.

Jealousy or selfishness?

I was trying to think about why, psychologically, people would be reticent to give up something of theirs to those who are already better off than them. I tried to have a dialogue with myself (and not be crazy, but that's kind of hard to do), and when I would ask myself, "Why do you not wish to give money to those who have more than you?" my answer was something along the lines of "they don't need any more, I need it more than they do." The other answer I would occassionally give was "they're already better off than me." These answers seem to embody selfishness and jealousy.

A question to be asked, then, is whether or not it is really selfish to think that I need money that (for the sake of the argument) I have worked hard to earn more than somebody who already has more than I will ever have in my entire lifetime. My immediate response is no, of course, because I don't want to be selfish. However, upon further reflection, I really think it is seflish, especially if I am trying to propone an elitist view. What if all that other person needs is one more dollar and he'll create the cure for cancer or the newest and best computer that will in turn lead someone else to create something equally spectacular? It does seem selfish to me.

I think it is also definitely jealousy. If someone is better or smarter or more wealthy than I am, I would feel jealous if he or she ended up with all of the money or books or whatever in the world simply because the person is better than I am in some way.

So I guess the point to all of this is that I (and other people probably) need to be less selfish and jealous if we are to accept my ethical theory.

The Necessity of Sacrifice, part 2

So yesterday I gave two plausible (hopefully, or perhaps at least one) examples of when a person makes a sacrifice within their own life to increase wellbeing later on. This leads into how to increase the peak wellbeing within a world: it requires sacrifice on the part of those with lower wellbeing.

Now, hopefully yesterday I showed that most people are certainly willing to sacrifice within their own lives to make their life better. The thing that people would balk at, then, is making sacrifices in their life in order to increase the wellbeing of someone else. However, it only seems to happen when it's some stranger or someone who they think is already better off. Parents, at least most, sacrifice constantly for their children in the hopes that their children will have better lives than they (the parents) had. Also, many people willingly sacrifice in order to give to those less fortunate than they (e.g., donations to charities, volunteering at soup kitchens, etc.). But if the receiver of such a sacrifice is already better off, then there seems to be a reticence. This is, however, the only way to increase peak value. And I believe that if people truly are willing to sacrifice, then giving up such a thing as money may actually increase the person's own wellbeing by increasing their happiness or some other factor of wellbeing to a higher degree than the loss due to giving up money.

Admittedly, it does seem passing strange to say that people should not be reticent. Even sitting here now, attempting to defend my theory, I'm having trouble saying, "No, give money to the rich and powerful!" and such things like that. I may come back to this idea when I've thought it through a little more.

The Necessity of Sacrifice, part 1

So it occurred to me that people might wonder how, since I have drawn an asymmetry, a world is ever to increase its peak value. To do so, people have to make sacrifices and go above and beyond the call of duty (since it is not necessary to do good but is only necessary not to do bad).

Let's go back to the example I had of a student choosing to play a sport or study for a test. In the scenario I thought was plausible, the student chose to study in order for a higher gain later on. In my eyes, this is making a sacrifice at one point (i.e., lowering wellbeing) in order for a higher wellbeing later. My hope is this seems plausible to most people; I think that most people would say that if the student chose to play the sport, the student was being irresponsible or lazy or some other negative thing. Again, this is what I assume. If my assumption is wrong—i.e., if people think it more plausible that a student should choose playing the sport over studying—then this goes out the door.

Perhaps, if you don't like this example, we can discuss going to work every day. Many adults go to work every day. Excepting for those few who actually enjoy their job, to me, this would be a lowering of wellbeing in order for a later gain (e.g., working 40 hours a week at a job you hate in order to have enough money to put food on the table for your family). This may be a more plausible "sacrifice" example, at least it seems so to me.

I will continue this tomorrow.