Comments are Fixed

I fixed the comment ability, so feel free to write whatever you want!

Economic Philosophy: Why You’ve Been Right

Most people that I know, that is, that I choose to spend time with are suspicious of capitalism. This suspicion is not unfounded and here’s a brief explanation of why.
It goes all the way back to the ancients 2500 years ago, specifically to Aristotle. While strolling through the market he noticed something that made no sense. It goes like this:
Someone (the capitalist) has money (M) and buys some goods or commodities (C); in this case we’ll say he’s bought some grain. The capitalist then pays someone a wage to produce bread from grain. Now, the baffling part is that when the capitalist sells his new bread he gets more money than he started with (M’). This occurs even after you factor out the wage he paid the worker and the money initially invested.
Mathematically: the capitalist starts with $100, he pays $90 for the grain, pays $10 for the labor, sells his bread and ends up with $110.

The money is turned into a commodity then turned back into money, more money.

M -> C -> M’

This seems perfectly normal to us, but Aristotle, being a rigid logician, realized that having more money at the end was impossible, YOU CAN’T MAKE SOMETHING FROM NOTHING! How could more money come out of the system than went in?
Nearly 2500 years later, Marx answers his question. Someone in the process is getting totally screwed over. It is either the laborer or the consumer, i.e. either the capitalist is underpaying the laborer for the value of his work or he’s charging the consumer more than the value of the product. There, are of course, a plethora of subtlety and nuance that I’m overlooking, but that’s the gist of it.
What’s most striking about this revelation is that this is the essence of capitalism. It’s not that capitalism is bad in the hands of bad men, but unfairness and exploitation are fundamental parts of what defines capitalism. Bottom line:
YOU CANNOT HAVE A JUST CAPITALISM!
If you did, it would be something other than capitalism. Now, the most common response I get to this line of reasoning is something like this:
“Well, the extra money (M’) comes from the premium of the division of labor.”
That is, we ought to pay more for the value of a commodity because we didn’t have to do it ourselves. If it weren’t for the capitalist and his initial investment then I’d have to make my own bread, does not the capitalist deserve a “bonus” for initiating this process?
This seems to make sense doesn’t it? Well, it doesn’t. The value of the division of labor is already present in the M -> C -> M’ equation in the form of the wages paid to the worker. The worker is the one who creates the value, converts grain to bread, and is paid for the value of his work, also, the actual commodity, itself, has a value attribute attached to its initial cost and then its price after conversion to bread.
QED. I could go and buy $90 worth of grain and turn it into bread myself or I could buy $100 dollars of bread made from the $90 worth of grain, I AM ALREADY PAYING THE PREMIUM FOR THE DIVISION OF LABOR. Paying $110 is pure exploitation of the consumer. Alternately, the capitalist could charge the consumer only $100 but only pay the worker $2, thereby skimming his profits from what the worker should rightfully have.
Again, the point is that a just capitalism is a paradox, much like a circle with four right angles, it can’t exist. So if you’ve always had a lingering suspicion of capitalism, you’ve been right.

Video Games and Philosophy Episode 1: Final Fantasy VI

This post serves the singular purpose of marrying my two favorite hobbies: video games and philosophy. As denoted by the title, this is only the first of many to come, so I thought I’d start with a game from my childhood.
If you were a geek, like I was growing up, then the Christmas season of 1994 was very, very exciting for you, because you likely got a copy of Final Fantasy VI under your tree (or Final Fantasy III as it was in the US). I’ll tell you right now that this was and still is a hell of a game, with dozens of characters, all of which get a significant amount of development, an epic story, and sidequests and Easter eggs spanning many hours of gameplay.
The philosophical aspect of the game comes mainly from the main villain, Emperor Gestahl (yes, my online pseudonym comes from a transliteration of the name when it was originally ported to the states in ’94 which, in turn, is a transliteration of the German word gestell). In the game there is an evil empire attempting to resurrect ancient technology that mythologically ravaged the world a thousand years ago, the protagonists that you play as are part of a rebel alliance called The Returners who are try to stop Gestahl and his empire from repeating the mistakes of the past.
In this fantasy world there exists creatures called Espers that are depicted as anthropomorphic nature spirits, they literally are the essence of nature enshrined within a corporeal body. The empire seeks to capture these Espers, place them in pneumatic tubes and suck the energy out of them thereby harnessing their life force in order to power their “Magitek” army, The Returners, of course, realize this is exactly how the world was nearly destroyed 1000 years ago and try to stop them.
At least one of the writers at Squaresoft knew his German philosophy well, in naming the ruler of this evil empire Gestahl, he or she infused the game with a potent amount of philosophical juice. If you don’t believe me that this is intentional then go and play Final Fantasy VII in which there is a side character actually named Heidegger. The name Gestahl comes from the German word gestell, which roughly translates into “enframing”. The term was coined by the legendary (yes, legendary) existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology”, one of my favorite all time philosophical essays.
In this essay, Heidegger muses about that fact that the Greek word “techne” (root for the modern word technology) was intimately tied to the Greek word “poesis” (root for the modern word poem). To the ancients, technological advancements were fundamentally considered art; it was that the craftsman was revealing something that was inside of the materials he would use to create his “techne”. Heidegger noted that there was something harmonious about the harnessing of technology to the ancients; it wasn’t about exploitation of naturally occurring resources, but rather the revealing of their nature in man’s hands. But looking around the early to mid 20th century he realized that technology was both no longer an art form, but also was exploitive. He uses the example of a windmill vs. a hydroelectric power plant. The windmill, an ancient technological device, sits benignly in an open plain, merely utilizing the path of the wind for our own purposes without destroying or taking away from this natural force, whereas a hydroelectric power plant involves damming up the river, diverting its course, and severely impacting the surrounding environment. In the former instance we remain in touch with the fundamental value of nature, in the latter case we see nature as a means to our own ends.
This is what gestell, or enframing, means. When we enframe, we fail to see nature’s value as it is, but only see its use value. For example, one who enframes sees a forest as merely lumber, a waterfall as hydroelectric power, or open plains as agro-farms or landfills. Heidegger notes that this way of viewing the world, not only has serious environmental consequences, but also has serious consequences to our existential relationship to our environment. Objectifying nature is only one step away from objectifying ourselves; it’s a slippery slope. He argued that the shift in how we view our “techne”, i.e. away from art and toward utility, marked a shift in the way we view ourselves. He chief concern was that, soon, we would enframe our own bodies; to a large extent we already have.
Back to Final Fantasy VI, note that Emperor Gestahl’s entire world dominating plot was centered around taking the Espers (the corporeal embodiment of nature) and converting them into raw energy, killing them in the process. Gestahl is the literary embodiment of enframing; note too that this enframing had already occurred once in this fantasy world’s history and HAD ALMOST DESTROYED THE PLANET! The philosophical message is clear, enframing is not just bad, but it is the “bad guy”, the one we should be rallying against, as the efforts of enframing will lead us to destruction.
Also, one of the main protagonists is a woman who is the child of a human mother and Esper father and her name is… Terra, who, at the beginning of the game, is brainwashed by Gestahl and used as the general for his army only later to be freed from her mind control and fight to thwart Gestahl. The message there: using the Earth (Terra) for the ends of enframing is a perversion of its natural inclination, i.e. we must “brainwash” the Earth in order for it participate in enframing.

Caveat Lector, if you will.

I felt that it's worth saying that in the post below and most of my future posts, I will utterly fail to represent competing views to the ones that I espouse. This is because what I present is what I feel, after considerable deliberation, to be the most accurate, cogent, and complete philosophical theory. As with the discussion on identity below, there are many competing theories available, but the one I posted is the one I endorse.

I don't hide this failure because that is the point of this blog, I'll slog through all of the philosophical muck for you, so you don't have to, and present the best that I can find. However, this does not mean that I don't want you to disagree with me, in fact, please do, contention is the life blood of healthy discourse.

Best regards,
Andrew

Metaphysics and Pop Culture: Identity Continuity in Sci-Fi TV

Fans of either Battlestar Galactica or Dollhouse should be familiar with the concept of life extension via body switching. Forgetting about the scientific probability of these types of technology, let’s look at what problems these pose to identity.
Why you should care: identity is an important question in metaphysics and perhaps one of the oldest. This question was posed by the pre-Socratics (philosophers before Socrates came on the scene 6th century B.C.), perhaps you’ve heard the old adage: you can’t step in the same river twice; Parmenides said that over 2500 years ago. So, apparently identity and, more importantly, self-identity has been important to us for a long time.
In fact, many and I mean many aspects of our social system rely the concept of identity including our entire criminal justice system and religious ideology, just to name a few. What is at the core of our collective belief on identity is that identity perseveres over time: that objects remain identical to themselves even as time passes. This is a concept that we all take for granted and have likely never questioned nor thought much about at all, thanks to Battlestar and Dollhouse, we have a nice platform on which to investigate.
A quick synopsis for those who haven’t seen Battlestar: there is a race of humanoid robots called Cylons, who, upon death have their consciousness downloaded into a new body waiting for them. These bodies are physically identical to their former one. Cylons claim to have overcome death by this method. As for Dollhouse: there is an organization that has developed the technology to store and transmit the contents of a person’s brain and can then upload that brain into a someone else’s body. A person can have their brain “backed up” on a hard drive and then uploaded into a new body upon their death.
We’ll talk about Dollhouse first, because it is the more clear-cut case of non-continuous identity. Let’s say that I have a back up of my brain created and then immediately afterward I die from a sudden aneurysm. The Dollhouse technicians upload my backed up brain into a host and viola, I am risen. This “new” me contains all of my memories, personality traits, and cognitive abilities. You can go up to the “new” me and ask, “Well, did it work?” and I would say, “Yes, I am alive again!” All seems well, doesn’t it? I may be “in” a new body, but it’s still me, right?
Actually no, the me that died is certainly me, but the me that woke up in the new body is someone or something that woke up for me, not me, myself. To illustrate my point, suppose I had my brain backed up, but then the technician immediately put the back up into a new host, while I was still alive. So there is me, as I am, and a person with my brain who thinks they are also me, if we had an argument about who the real me is, who do you think would win? Obviously this person who just happens to have a copy of my brain in their head is not actually me, whether they think so and whether I am alive or dead.
The same problems occur in Battlestar Galactica, the only difference is that the new host body is identical to the old one and that the transference only occurs upon death, but, like with Dollhouse, the same counter-examples could easily be modified to show similar disparities in continuous identity.
The payoff to this is: my identity is MORE than a: having my brain and b: holding the belief that I am me!
So what is to be done now? It seems that having your own brain and believing that you’re identical to yourself are not sufficient criteria for being identical to yourself. (For another really interesting case study in identity go to wikipedia and type in: Ship of Theseus.) To make this even more complicated consider the fact that I got a haircut this morning. Yesterday, my hair was long, but today my hair is short, though I still consider myself to be identical to myself. How could I, though, I am clearly different today than I was yesterday. What if it wasn’t a haircut, what if I had and arm cleaved off in an accident or a part of my brain removed? Our bodies are constantly changing, in fact if you’re anywhere near my age, then there is not a cell in your body left over from when you were born, so if even on the cellular level there is no remnant from when you were conceived, how can you possibly hold on to the notion that you are and have always been identical to yourself?
There is no one singular core (I’ve looked) of us that never changes over time that we can point at and say, “Aha, so long as I have that I am assured of my identity.” Every part of us is in a continual state of change. So the whole concept of identity is a fraud, right?
When we execute someone for murder twenty years after the crime, are we punishing the right person? After twenty years, mitosis would have replaced every cell that was present when that person committed the crime, in essence the murderer is long gone forever and we are executing an innocent man. Just like with Dollhouse the death row inmate believes he is identical to himself from twenty years ago, but that belief doesn’t justify the truth of the statement and he has a brain that was the same brain of the murderer from twenty years ago, but that doesn’t justify identity either. What’s even worse is assuming he didn’t commit the murder twenty years ago, but one minute ago. Surely the murderer from one minute ago is identical to himself one minute later, right? But we live in a constant flux of time; physics teaches us that a lot can go on in a minute.
If I took a holistic snapshot of myself at an exact moment of time and then again one second later there would huge differences. Old cells would have died and new ones formed, the electrochemical state of my brain would have changed, the level of radiation passing through my body from space would have changed, the concentration of oxygen in my blood would be different, etc, etc, etc. Basically every single moment is completely and irreplicateably different from another moment:
WE ARE NEVER EVEN IDENTICAL WITH OURSELVES FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT!
Unless we acknowledge that we are more than just physical entities (and no I’m not about to start talking about souls). We are temporal entities too: we are not three-dimensional creatures; rather, we are four-dimensional creatures.
Take, for instance, my elbow, which is a part of my physical body. It is not me, but it is part of a physical continuum that is me. I couldn’t point to my elbow and say that is my, but I could say that it is part of me. That’s how it is for time too. The entirety of my physical body at any particular point of time is a part of the larger me, not me as a whole. The me as a whole stretches back to the point at which I came into being and ends at when I go out of being. The entirety of me is very large in time and the me you can see at any given moment is, like my elbow, merely part of a larger continuum. Identity therefore only exists as a continuum in time, which allows for physical change because our being in time does not ever change. I am identical with myself at now, birth, and death, because each state is part of the same continuum.
This explanation for identity allows for properties of objects to change but remain auto-identical and accounts for the problems with Battlestar and Dollhouse, in both of those TV shows there was a break in both that temporal and physical continuity.
The more robust understanding we have for our own identity, the more enriched and capable we are of being present in our own life. With this concept of identity in mind, you can rest assured that when you are punished for past actions, you are being punished justifiably.

Best regards,
Andrew

Twitter

I'll be twittering when new posts go up. http://twitter.com/NewLyceum

Welcome to The New Lyceum

"The question has been forgotten," is how Heidegger opens his opus Being in Time. I share his sentiment (though he was arguably talking about ancient Greek metaphysics) in that philosophy was originally concerned with improving life and living well. In my experience, the discipline has become reclusive, relegating itself to university classrooms and wrapping itself in elusive vernacular. While understanding the metaphysical substratum of the universe and delineating epistemic transcendental presuppositions may not seem that important to a good life, I believe they are. So I see my task as bringing to those who don't feel like swimming through massive philosophical tomes the enrichment that they bring.
Living well includes so many aspects of life that I hope to cover an enormous range of topics, facilitated through the lens of philosophy.

Best regards,
Andrew