Comprehensive Notes on Exam Topics

Exam Information and Blue Book Essay

• The final day will include a review for the in-class essay, similar to the previous one. Students need to bring a blue book.

• There will be two separate prompts for the final essay. Students should choose only one prompt to write about.

Grade Visibility and Components

• All test grades should currently be visible to students.

• The remaining grades are the final essay (15 points) and the attendance/participation grade (15 points).

• Attendance/participation grades will be posted mid to late next week due to the grading workload.

• For attendance/participation, some leeway is given; missing one to three classes will not result in point deductions. However, missing four or more classes will lead to a quicker reduction in points.

• Active participation can mitigate the impact of missed classes. Students present every day without speaking will still receive full points.

In-Class Essay Prompts and Expectations

• The prompts for the in-class essay will be reviewed.

• The essay format will be the same as the previous one.

• Students who scored around 11 or 12 out of 15 can improve by providing more detail and explanation, especially when discussing philosophers like Hume or Leibniz.

• For example, when writing about Hume, explain why he believes pain is more powerful than pleasure, including examples and motivations for his argument.

• When discussing Leibniz's concept of greater goods, explain what he means by "greater good" and provide examples; consider the fear of a utopia.

• Reading the provided excerpts is crucial for success.

• Do not rely on tools like ChatGPT to generate essays, as they may provide inaccurate information or examples.

• The excerpts are approximately 10 pages long and available on Blackboard.

• Mill and Schopenhauer are relatively clear writers compared to someone like Descartes.

Schopenhauer's Pessimistic Philosophy

• One prompt focuses on Arthur Schopenhauer and his pessimistic philosophy.

• The question is: From all the suffering of the world, explain Schopenhauer's overall take on human existence. Specifically, what are the consequences of human will, and how do we deal with them?

• To answer this, explain what Schopenhauer thinks the will is, what it leads to, and why.

• Schopenhauer was influenced by Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism.

• Kant believed that we can only observe the world through our senses and process it with our brains, limiting our ability to know the true nature of the world.

• Schopenhauer agrees with Kant that we are closed off from knowing the world in itself.

• However, Schopenhauer believes the will is an exception, describing it as an insatiable desire and striving for existence that underlies the world of phenomena.

• Schopenhauer believes that the will is the cause of and perpetuates suffering. He argues that whether we look at humans or the animal kingdom, the will leads to endless suffering.

• From birth, we have survival instincts to avoid cold, seek heat, gravitate towards food, and move away from pain.

• Even when we can take care of basic needs, the will continues to want more and can never be satisfied.

• Fulfilling natural desires is replaced with a striving for more, causing unfulfillment, pain, and suffering.

• Animals also suffer due to the will, but Schopenhauer believes that humans suffer uniquely because we can contemplate our own pain.

• Due to our powers of reflection and foresight, we have a “machine for scoring up all of our pleasures and all of our pains.”

• Anticipation detracts from pleasure, as our expectations often exceed the reality.

• Animals enjoy the present moment without evaluation, unlike humans.

• When animals suffer, it is as if for the first time, as they have no capacity for storing up their pain like we do.

• Humans suffer in the present moment, reflect on the event causing additional pain, and this can last a lifetime.

• Anticipating something painful increases the pain, as we suffer leading up to the event, making our situation worse than that of animals.

• Humans are uniquely aware of their own mortality, and we can know with fair certainty when we are going to die.

Schopenhauer's Solution: Denial of the Will

• The will can never be satisfied and, therefore, leads to suffering. Human beings suffer uniquely for all of the reasons that I just mentioned.

• Schopenhauer proposes a threefold approach to address this: for ourselves, for everyone else, and for future generations.

• This falls under the blanket of denial of the will. We must deny the will. If the will is the engine that fuels our suffering, then that engine must be turned down.

• Regarding everyone else, one of the three parts that is regarding other people. you must view this world as a prison. looking at everyone else as a fellow prisoner may engender feelings of goodwill.

• Looking at the world as a penitentiary, where everyone pays the penalty of existing, can put others in the right light.

• We should view others as beings conceived and born in sin, living to atone for it, fostering tolerance, patience, regard, and love for one's neighbor.

• Regarding ourselves, we need to live a more ascetic life by denying the will. Denying worldly goods/pleasures or non-necessities.

• Concerning future generations, Schopenhauer advocates for antinatalism: stopping procreation. If existence is painful, we should spare future generations the burden by not bringing them into the world.

• Schopenhauer’s philosophy leads to the eventual extinction of the human race, which he thinks is great.

• The claim that Schopenhauer had kids doesn’t diminish this philosophy, he might have just backslided.

• According to him, this entire world is a thing that we can’t ever know the true nature of because we just have to view it through these senses that we can’t ever get out of. So, we can only see it through one pair of glasses that we can’t ever take off.

• This philosophy states: such a person who recognizes their own inner and true self within every other being must also regard the endless suffering of all living things as their own suffering, and we must therefore take it upon ourselves the pain of the entire world

• According to this principle of his, the amount of suffering in the sun shining upon us daily would make the world better off in a crystalline state.

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarian Ethics

• Another essay prompt involves J.S. Mill's utilitarian ethics.

• The question is: Explain J. S. Mill's particular conception of utilitarian ethics and how it defends itself against the typical criticism directed at hedonism.

• For full credit, the answer must include what the principle of utility is.

• To address this, explain Mill's conception of utilitarian ethics and how it defends against criticisms of hedonism.

• The principle of utility states that every act or decision should aim to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

• Happiness is defined as pleasure and the absence of pain; unhappiness is pain and the privation of pleasure.

• Mill argues that the only proof that happiness is desirable is that people do desire it.

• The common complaint against utilitarians is that their focus on pleasure reduces humans to the level of animals.

• Critics view utilitarians with the claim that we’re acting like animals.

• He rebuttals this by receiving intellectual pleasures. He claims that some types of pleasures this is mailed directly are more desirable and more valuable, and these are what he calls pleasures of the intellect.

• Mill rebuts this by arguing that some pleasures, particularly intellectual ones, are more desirable and valuable.

• This is because we care so much about these pleasures of the intellect. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once we are made conscious of them, we do not regard anything as happiness, which does not include their gratification”

• It is because, if happiness is desirable well, it’s because we all desire it. Well, how do we know that the pleasures of the intellect are more valuable? Well, it’s because we value them more.

• Mill differentiates his utilitarianism from Bentham's by emphasizing the quality of pleasure over quantity.

• Bentham focused solely on the quantity of pleasure, stating that a push-pin is as good as poetry; meaning that the quality of the pleasure is irrelevant.

• This can also be viewed with the following illustration. Say, if you have the option, to eat a sandwich or to cure cancer, right, then maybe we would be compelled to do one over the other because of the difference of the type of pleasure that it is.

Criticism of Utilitarianism

• Discuss a thought experiment that criticizes utilitarianism, pointing out the criticism. The trolley problem. Should you pull a switch to have one person die and five saved?

• One criticism is an amended version that was given to us by Judith Thompson. Pushing a fat man over the bridge. To save five people.

• Using this example, if utilitarianism would ask us to do this, then it would ask us to just straight up murder innocent people.

• Examples are: killing one person to harvest organs, the Roman Empire cheering while the innocent die and the ultimate test- If we could torture one person to make the entire planet full of nothing but peace and mortis, would it be worth it?

• In 1930 Mississippi, where there’s death and lynching around the town’s black population, the local sheriff might just say that he just has to throw a name out there just to save the town from mass death. Is this right to do so?

• In response to the question as to your preference between a blissful non-human animal, or a human alive, what would that be? The response was an animal.