philosophy unit 1

descartes

meditations

wants to know if there is anything we can be absolutely certain about

in other words, he’s setting the bar for knowledge at certainty

rationalism

knowledge gained through reason (intuition, deduction, and innate knowledge)

empiricism

knowledge is gained through experience (observation and senses)

skepticism

suspending judgement with respect to some class of propositions that we commonsensically classify as knowledge

two types: local and global

local skepticism

we cannot know certain things/certain types of thingsg

global skepticism

we cannot know anything

skeptic about

external world

moral truths

mind

possible sources of doubt

“For this reason, it will suffice for the rejection
of all of these opinions, if I find in each of them
some reason for doubt”

deceptive senses

dream world

evil demon

two things we know in terms of evil demon

the thing doing the deceiving

the thing being deceived

the I as a thinking thing

“But I do not yet understand sufficiently what I am—I,
who now necessarily exist” (64)
Some things Descartes thinks the I is not:
- rational animal
- something dependent on the body

what is a thinking thing

a thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, senses, imagines

the essence of the thing

Does the same wax still remain? I must confess that it does; no
one denies it; no one thinks otherwise. So what was there in the
wax that was so distinctly grasped? Certainly none of the
aspects that I reached by means of the senses” (67)
What remains when we strip away the physical properties: that
it is something extended (in space), flexible, and mutable.

how do you grasps the essence of the wax

sense, imagine, or mind alone

rule out sense and imagination

why not imagination

The imagination lets us imagine some of the changes that the
wax could undergo in terms of its mutability and extension,
but not all
• I cannot imagine all the possible changes it could undergo in
terms of shape
• There are ways of being extended I cannot accurately imagine
• The insight of the wax as something extended, flexible, and
mutable therefore does not come from the faculty of the
imagination

mind body problem

are mind and bodies made up of the same kind of stuff

dualism

no

body is divisible, extended

mind is indivisible, unextended

materialism

yes

ekphrasis

vivid description of a scene or work of art

through imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on teh “action” of a painting or sculpture, the writing may amplify and expand its meaning

two elements of ekphrasis

description and interpretation

what do you think is the shared claim these two texts are making

sexton argues that video games hold memories and stories and help to build relationships

doty argues the same but with objects instead

the objects we keep have a number of important non-aesthetic functions

establishing and maintaining relationships

coping with the world

escaping loneliness

holding memories and stories

seeing the world anew

the importance of use

“There is a Japanese word for things made more beautiful
by use, that bear the evidence of their own making, or
the individuating marks of time’s passage: a kind of beauty
not immune to time but embedded in it”

objects as carrying meaning

“Then, a faith in the capacity of the object to carry
meaning, to serve as a vessel. For what? Ourselves, of
course. I mean that the objects [depicted ] are, ultimately,
soulful, are anything but lifeless. Of course they have lost
their particular contexts, all the stuff of narrative, the
attached human stories that would have placed them in
some specific relation to a life, but they are nonetheless
full of that life, suffused with intimacy” (48)

virtual ethics

the rules of the game: internal/rules based view

external/narrative based view

motivating concern of virtual ethics

“A common belief is this: video games are just games,
the violence portrayed in them is merely the fictional
representation of violence, and there is nothing morally
wrong with the fictional representation of violence” (10)

the gamer’s dilemma

are virtual death and pedophilia morally equivalent

both are problematic

We must therefore treat both in the same way: either virtual
murder and virtual pedophilia are both morally impermissible
and we should condemn them equally, or they are both morally
permissible and we should tolerate them equally

teasing apart morality and legality

morality does not imply legality

It seems plausible that it could be totally legal to carry
out an awful action in a video game and yet there be
something morally objectionable about doing so.

most morally interesting and challenging cases of video game violence satisfy 3 conditions

fictional, willful, malicious

you need all three to be morally interesting

fictional

purely done to affect someone IN the gamee

willful

needs to be done without the intention to progress in the game

malicious

mal intent

what is difficult about virtual ethics

tracking/knowing intentions

transfer virtual—> real world

scale of moral criticism

three moral theories

realism

anti-realism

relativism

realism

we can know about morality

anti-realism

skeptical about morality

relativism

objective morality as it applies to certain cases, however you lose the abilities to criticize

three realist theories

consequentialism

deontology

virtue ethics

consequentialism

the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by focusing on the consequences of that action

formula: weighing actual benefits by actual harms

• more pleasure less pain

• important features:

  • impartial

  • agent neutral

deontology

believes that morality works by our having certain rights, as well as having duties/obligations

• can be positive/negative

formula: categorical imperative:

• universalizability

• end in itself

have to meet both conditions to be a permissible action

positive duty

requires me to do something in order to fulfill it

negative duty

requires you to refrain from something

rights and duties stand in

a relation of correspondance

universalizability

could this action be done by everyone without becoming a logical impossibility

end in itself

using someone as a means vs someone as a mere means

so act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person
of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means”

deontology and consequentialism do not focus on

the character of the agent making the choice

virtue ethics

consider the agent and their character when considering their morality in a given situation

moral character

“the complex psychological web of habits,
feelings, beliefs, desires, and motivations, which
all have some impact on our outward
behaviors”

happiness and human good

chief/overarching good will be that which is an end in itself/self sufficient

• Aristotle thinks that this chief good is eudaimonia
  (happiness, or flourishing)

  • what flourishing turns out to be is living well, or living in such a
    way to fully realize our nature and using our capacities to the
    highest degree of human ability

human good

acting in accordance with virtue over the course of a life

cultivating virtues

• The virtues themselves are a sort of intermediate (OR MEAN), and we cultivate them by acting neither in ways that involve an excess or deficiency of
a certain character trait
• This mean is relative to the individual and where they are in their
development of the virtues
• It is easy to act in accordance with vice (there are many ways to fail)
and difficult to act in accordance with virtue (only one way to act that
would actually realize acting in accordance with the mean)

virtue ethic critiques

no guiding principles, what is virtue, where is the mean, acting accordance to virtue could lead to consequences

consequentialism critiques

context important harms/benefits

no intention

how do we compare dif benefits and harms

nuance missing

sometimes real harm unavoidable (gives wrong answer)

what are the boundaries of the impacts

deontology critiques

universaility not most important thing

no exceptions

why not consider consequentialism in virtual ethics

you need evidence that actions in virtual world actually leads to more harm than good in teh real world

actual evidence is unclear/indeterminate

deontology not used in virtual ethics

could help us in terms of not using people as a means but what about the single player games

solution virtual ethics can offer

bad actions harm your moral character

The argument here is that carrying out fictional, willful,
and malicious acts makes it harder to develop real-world
virtues

On the flipside, virtue ethics allows us to conceive of
video games involving moral choice as a place for
developing virtues via practice.
But there are two things that should give us pause here:
• This means we can probably also develop vices
• And there’s still a question of just which virtues could be
developed in this way

different moral systems in game vs life?

Another possible challenge to the virtue ethics account of
virtual ethics comes from Garry Young, who argues that
maybe we do develop/construct a moral system (of virtues
and vices) for navigating the world of the game, but this is
different from the moral system of the real world.
If this is true, then maybe we can criticize a fictional, willful,
and malicious act as morally problematic in game, but the lack
of relevance to the moral system of the real world means that
we are unable to charge the player with having done anything
morally problematic

closing questions

1.) Do you think players’ moral choices can sometimes be a genuine
reflection of their real-world moral thinking?
2.) Do players harm their moral character when their virtual actions
serve to cultivate immoral desires that they actually possess?