But what if their decisions happen to exist on multiple planes, or are acceptable under many moral frameworks. Now for a long elaborate and probably confusing example! I have decided that I view myself as a citizen of the world, and when I see unnecessary fighting I cringe and feel true sadness. I must do something! I must stop violence! It so happens that the one area where I see such violence is between Israelis and Palestinians.
If the US was to act, as we do, to end the violence in the Middle East, one could justify its actions through multiple frames. Such actions have claims of creating peace and ending violence, increasing relations with Arab nations, supporting US unilateral actions, increasing US �soft power,� increasing Bush�s popularity among moderates etc. Clearly, ending violence and increasing Bush�s popularity exists on different moral frameworks for decision making. I want to act because I want to help people, but I am also doing things which I may not want to do, but are inevitable side effects.
So when I first look at this is seems pretty irrelevant. As long as you make the decision according to your internal moral conscience, then that is all you can do. But two questions arise from this, in my opinion at least. The first is pretty simple, through creating peace you also increase your relations with these oil rich nations. One may call you a capitalist and say your framework for this decision misguided. Well that is pretty simple to answer. That person has no idea what moral framework guided you, and as long as you were genuine in your want to help people, that person should just be ignored.
The second and much larger question revolves around the decision making process. If I have an objective I want to accomplish, should my decision making process involve any possible side-effects? Returning to the Huck Finn example, Huck knew that by helping Jim escape he was directly doing the right thing, but what if he realized that he indirectly, might have been causing the beatings of all the slaves who knew Jim. Creating a genuine authentic self is so unbelievably hard because of the complexities of every decision. If framework A is respect everyone and framework B is slaves can be abused and are sub-human, then Huck�s action would cause actions which are consistent with both of these (saving Jim, other slaves being beat).
So is his action to save Jim consistent under his authentic morality? This is a hard question, one that I am not really sure about yet. Right now, I would have to say that obviously freeing Jim, in a completely practical sense, would outweigh the consequences which would probably meet the other slaves. But what if the punishment was equal to Jim�s reward, hypothetical situation? I am stumped. Yes, one has to cognizant of the consequences of their actions, even if they are not easily observed. But one would then also have to look in the face of this slave and deny them their freedom, something which seems utterly impossible to me. When looking over this situation, the decision that would be consistent with Huck�s genuine moral framework is whatever he thinks would help people. Whatever the actual consequences are, whatever, the situation is so unbelievably complex that the mere will to do the right thing is enough to qualify as consistent with his moral choice to help others.
Ort 2
It was when you (Mrs. Weidner) said, �well� you have to believe in something,� that I realized this ort was going to be my rant on �Middle School Subjectivism�. Well, then I realized rants are generally dumb, incoherent and offensive so I decided to go with the regular somewhat intelligent essay. To give this quote some context, it revolves around creating a �self.� Ones actions, ones words, and ones decisions define who that person is. We need to begin to realize we have a responsibility to make these decisions reflect on our authentic self, who we truly are, our beliefs.
So back to this quote, �you have to believe in something.� Well when I first heard this it quickly reminded me of, obviously, people who do not believe in anything. The kids who are so misguided and so desperately want to be part of something that they reject everything. Whenever I try to talk some sense into my friends who have fallen into this trap, the discussions always devolve into me making a strikingly intelligent statement (if I may so) and that person responding ��.how can you know that.� Basically, it then further devolves into that person saying well we cannot really know anything, we cannot really believe in anything, we cannot really know anyone, we can�t even know ourselves! Every time, no matter the person, this always happens. There is something about those statements that is just sooooo pleasing.
Lets take this down the road of we cannot know anything, we cannot know anyone. The basic day involves a few things for me. I wake up, usually eat some sort of breakfast, drive to school, go to my classes, hang out with friends after school, go home, listen to music, read some of a book, work on debate, do some homework, go to bed. Now, assuming the world is completely subjective, I wonder how much of these things I can still do! I guess I can still wake up (was I ever asleep though! Who knows!) and eat breakfast (assuming the food is real and not some Matrix style allusion) and drive to school. Once I get to school I go to Literature class where we dissect the meaning of stories. Well I guess we can never know what the author meant, or even what the words on the pages truly mean. I guess studying Lit. is a waste of time. Then I go to Spanish where obviously, I do not know if my teacher is telling me the true translations of these words. But more importantly, its just a waste of time because it is impossible to really know another language, how can I know something that is soooo different then me! Then I have some other classes where I learn that I cannot know anything! Should I go home then, listen to music that I can never understand because I can never know what (1)the emotions are being expressed in the music and (2) what emotions even are. I guess I should just quit debate because its pointless to argue about important things sense we can never come to a true conclusion about anything. Pretty much, life would be a big waste of time.
But on a more personal level, I feel insulted when those words �You cannot really know anyone,� are uttered. Sure, to an extent, we cannot truly understand the intricacies of the human mind to completely know that person. But to say I cannot know someone is ridiculous. To say that one day when I am married I do not know my wife, or my child, is an insult. Begin able to draw connections with those people, share experiences, love them, that right there is something to believe in. That is something which we can return to at any time no matter what the circumstances. That is one of the things that we can know; I will know that my wife loves me, I will know that my wife is an amazing person, I will most assuredly know that women. �Middle School Subjectivists� depress me, you have to believe in something, anything, even if it just someone that you know.
Ort 3
Today we learned about Kuhn�s idea of paradigms. Different frameworks exist in this world, and ideas that exist in one framework are untranslatable to those in other frameworks. At first I thought that this idea was a bit too totalizing, and I still do in fact, but I at least realized its truth. I think this theory is best proved in observing modern day competitive debate. Quick tidbit for context: I love debate. I would not be the person I am now had I not gotten involved in the activity. If you�re ever curious about what it is or why it�s the best activity for someone to get involved with during their academic career, just ask.
Modern day competitive debate, the specific type is called Policy Debate, has evolved into a nuanced, extremely technical, and well, its hard to explain. Without going into the justifications (if you want to hear them just ask), at the nationally competitive level individuals are speaking at an average speed 350-400 words per minute, which is full of jargon that anyone not accustomed to the activity would ponder at. In addition, as opposed to most public debates, the actual debating is at such a technical level that ignoring one small argument, out of 150 can cause that person to lose.
So what does this have to do with Kuhn? Kuhn says that ideas within one paradigm cannot be translated to other paradigms. If anyone without any experience with debate were to watch a round, the discourse occurring in that round would be a different language. It is hard enough to comprehend the ideas floating around a round, but when they are accelerated to a high speed with unusual jargon, any and every �outsider� would fail at comprehending what occurred in a round. And then this got me thinking, is that bad?
It is pretty much a fact that it would not be half the activity it is without these aspects, I know that I would quit if someone abolished these things. But that does not necessarily mean they are good. From my limited understanding of Kuhn, I would assume he would say that it is inevitable for such barriers to exist between different paradigms/activities, which again, does not really answer the question if it is bad or not.
Some may say it excludes people from joining a worthwhile activity, while others say it is artificial, and others may even say that it is just to make us kids feel like we are special and smart. But then again, this level of uniqueness is true to practically all activities. There is no way I could go to a juggling convention and understand what was going on. Everyone eventually finds an activity that they will love, and that activity will be quirky and special and of course, untranslatable, even if not to the extent of debate.
Everyone has their own paradigm and framework, and while it would be neat if there could be one universal paradigm, that�s impossible. But is it bad that we will not be able to have a universal understanding of other paradigms, even if this is completely impossible, would it be a good thing? It would sure be helpful, but these differences are needed to foster the type of individuality and uniqueness that makes this world worthwhile.