Freedom and resentment

“Freedom and resentment” is one critical essay of Strawson, which was originally delivered as a lecture to the British Academy and then published in Proceedings of the British Academy (1962).

Here he is...

Being a philosophy student of Oxford’s Continuing Education Programme, recently have we been asked to read this paper of Strawson. That’s how I came up with it.

In his paper, overall, Strawson argues the role and implications of determinism (assuming the possible truth of determinism) for agents susceptible of moral assessment. His main argument is that "pessimism" and "optimism" about the compatibility of determinism and morality needn't be mutually exclusive, that is to say, they can somehow be reconciled.

But how come? His argument about the compatibility of determinism and morality is further strengthened by his differentiation of attitudes as:
1. Reactive attitudes (such as resentment and gratitude)
2. Moral reactive attitudes
3. Self reactive attitudes

The key question in his essay is that if we assume determinism to hold true, would we have to assess everybody with an "objective attitude"?

According to Strawson "No!" because first of all, being a human renders reactive attitudes natural even under the case in which the agents are deemed to be free from responsibility (answerability, accountability) due to various reasons.

Likewise, in arguing moral attitudes, Strawson claims that believing determinism to be true does not necessarily lead us to "abandon moral dispprobation of agents."

In summary, he arrives at the general conclusion that the reasons of the fact that in some circumstances we need to suspend our moral reactive attitudes toward some agent doesn't entail the truth of determinism. Furthermore, rationality is not disputable for issues related to the very nature of human being such as having reactive attitudes.

What are you?

In his second meditation, after seeking the truth that leaves no room for doubt, Descartes finally becomes sure about something: “He is, he exists.”

The famous quote of him does not come yet in its complete form. But he basically says “I am, I exist’, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind.” He is pretty close though…

Even the existence of a malicious demon who tries to deceive him all the time cannot deceive him about the very fact that he thinks. As long as he is busy thinking about whether he is imagining in his sleep or not, whether his senses sometimes deceive him or not he exists.

But what entails this “thinking”? What does he mean by thinking, the endeavour of his soul?

The attributes, according to Descartes that make him a thinking thing are doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, being willing or unwilling, imagining and having sensory perceptions.

What do you think? Do you think this list is fair enough? If not, what are some of the attributes you assign to thinking?

What the bleep do we know?

Long time ago, I had watched the movie named "What the bleep do we know?"

It was actually a documentary type movie about how the quantum physics changed the way we perceive and interpret the seemingly real world we live in.

Now as I am reading Descartes' meditations, I cannot avoid, but think that modern philosophers do not apreciate as much Descartes' starting point by questioning the existence of anything as they should in the light of quantum theory's recent findings. 

Anyway, as Simon Blackburn says:

"Perhaps the most unsettling thought many of us have, often quite early on in childhood, is that the whole world might be a dream; that the ordinary scenes and objects of everyday life might be fantasies. The reality we live in may be a virtual reality, spun out of our own minds, or perhaps injected into our minds by some sinister Other. Of course, such thought come, and then go. Most of us shake them off. But why are we right to do so? How can we know that the world as we take it to be, is the world as it is? How do we begin to think about the relation between appearance and reality: things as we take them to be, as opposed to things as they are?" (Think, pp. 15, Simon Blackburn)