Are you authentic?

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Group: Second Philosophy
Discussion leader: Sojourna Alexandre / Kathryn Koromilas
Where: Open Habitat, Second Life
When: Sunday, 28 September, 2008
Time: 9pm GMT / 1pm SLT
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So you think you are authentic?
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I challenge you to prove to the discussion crowd just how authentic you are!

We are human beings who tend to value:

- authenticity (for a definition, see below) over -inauthenticity
- being what we are over being something we are not
- truth over deception
- meaning over bullshit
- whole and integrated selves over fragmented selves

It all started with Socrates saying that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Ever since then, we have attached value to things that give meaning to our lives, to personal freedom and responsibility, to living lives that we author, to being authentic!

The odd thing is, that we find ourselves “thrown” into this human existence with the seemingly impossible dilemma of:
a) choosing to live our own life
or b) having our life chosen for us.

Philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre and Walter Kaufmann, amongst others, have all at one time or another been problematised by the question of authenticity.

Authenticity is a notion that refers to living with the attitude that:

- I freely and fully engage in life, activities and other projects and I engage in these projects as my own,
- I am the author of my own life,
- I act in a way that reflects my genuine beliefs and desires.

Quite simply, authenticity is about choosing to live your own life and about creating meaning in what seems to be a universal void of absolute meaning and reassurance that our lives have any real meaning beyond what we can forge.

Albert Camus, for example, had a hard time trying to reconcile this desire for an authentic and meaningful living in the face of the ultimate futility of human existence, after all, whatever we do, create, build or learn in this life ends when we die. So what’s the point? This paradox of human existence Camus called the Absurd. He concluded however that human beings are able to create their own meaning in the world. Existentialism is about the individual’s response and reaction to living in this world and authenticity is the mode of living according to your genuine beliefs, desires and sense of free will.

The opposite – living inauthentically – is when I am deceiving myself, and living in bad faith (see below for definition of bad faith).

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QUESTIONS
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How authentic are you? To answer this, first take the authenticity test, below, and then support your score with your own knee-jerk reaction to the notion of living authentically. This test is obviously just for fun and to help kick off the discussion, but did it offer any insight into this topic and to your personal and philosophical response to the goal of authentic living? Is there are difference between the examined life and the authentic life?

Is it even actually possible to live authentically? Personal morality, responsibility and meaning-creation is the core of authentic living, and according to the existentialists the individual is ultimately alone in determining how to live their life in spite of all the external influences (culture, pace of living, technology). One way of determining authentic action, is to judge whether you would act in a particular way, or desire something, or believe something, if no one else was around to influence you. So, can we live authentic lives?

Why do we value being authentic, anyway? We do we desire to live authentic lives? What is wrong with being in-authentic, un-real and fake? What is wrong with being dishonest with or to ourselves?

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Some definitions from the Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names http://www.philosophypages.com/dy
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AUTHENTICITY
Self-conscious appropriation of the conditions of one’s own existence and identity. According to Heidegger, such deliberate reflection about the goals and values of life is the only successful response to the experience of Angst without falling into self-deception.

ANGST
German word for the anxiety or anguish produced by an acute awareness of the implications of human freedom. An important notion for existentialist philosophers, including especially Kierkegaard and Heidegger.

SELF-DECEPTION
Avoidance or outright denial of unpleasant aspects of reality, especially those which might otherwise warrant an unfavorable opinion about ourselves. Thus, for example, the wishful thought, “I’m not really addicted to nicotine; I could quit smoking any time.” is clearly self-deceptive.

Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre condemned self-deception as bad faith, or an inauthentic response to the anxiety produced by contemplation of human freedom.

Although most of us retrospectively acknowledge the role of such a practice in our own lives, it isn’t clear what makes it possible for a single person to be both deceived and deceiver. How can I both know the truth and yet keep it from myself at the same time? Unless the deception is entirely unconscious, there must be some degree of willful disregard of the evidence that I suspect would lead to the unpleasant truth I would rather not face.

BAD FAITH
In the philosophy of Sartre, an effort to avoid anxiety by denying the full extent of one’s own freedom. Bad faith, on this view, is an especially harmful variety of self-deception, since it forestalls authentic appropriation of responsibility for ourselves.

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READINGS
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Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy entry on Existentialism, Authenticity paragraph: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/#2.3

Wikipedia entry on Authenticity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authenticity_(philosophy)

Articles by Anthony Hatzimoysis for the New Statesman:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2007/11/existentialism-philosophical
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2007/11/existentialist-living-final

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The authenticity test.
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Take the following authenticity test, adapted from “Becoming More Authentic: The Positive Side of Existentialism,” by James Park, found here: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/AU.html

For each answer, give yourself a score based on the following scale:
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

1. To what degree do I still copy other human beings?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

2. Do I acknowledge that some of my past choices were enculturated?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

3. Am I actively resisting the expectations of other people in order to pursue values and purposes I consider more important?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

4. Have I started to re-create or re-invent myself, centring my new being around purposes I have freely chosen?
[very much—3 points somewhat—2 points very little—1 point none—0]

5. Have I created my own means of making a living? Choose one:
I have resisted holding a job in order to devote myself to more important purposes—3 points
I have created a brand new occupation in which I can pursue my Authentic project-of-being—3 points
I have modified an existing occupation to be more Authentic—2 points
I have a job that leaves little room for Authenticity—0 points

Artificial Intelligence / Consciousness

*Discussion in Second Life Sunday, Sept 21 @ 13:00 SLT / 21:00 GMT, Moderated by: Maria Hume / Marya Blaisdale*

*Transcript of the discussion*

“The best reason for believing that robots might some day become conscious is that we human beings are conscious, and we are a sort of robot ourselves. That is, we are extraordinarily complex self-controlling, self-sustaining physical mechanisms, designed over the eons by natural selection, and operating according to the same well-understood principles that govern all the other physical processes in living things: digestive and metabolic processes, self-repair and reproductive processes, for instance. It may be wildly over-ambitious to suppose that human artificers can repeat Nature’s triumph, with variations in material, form, and design process, but this is not a deep objection. It is not as if a conscious machine contradicted any fundamental laws of nature, the way a perpetual motion machine does. Still, many sceptics believe – or in any event want to believe – that it will never be done.” (Daniel Dennett)

What is Consciousness?
“The words “mind” and “consciousness” are used by different communities in different ways. For philosophers, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, the words are used in a way that is both more precise and more mundane: they refer to the familiar, everyday experience of having a “thought in your head”, like a perception, a dream, an intention or a plan, and to the way we know something, or mean something or understand something.” (Wiki)

John Searle states that it is incoherent to think that AI could ever achieve consciousness because a machine could never achieve ‘understanding’ in the sense that humans have, while Minsky’s view is that the mind consists of several hundred mini computer-like systems that have evolved to perform specific tasks; these mini computers combined create consciousness – therefore it is theoretically possible to create AI consciousness.

So, what do you think?

1. Do you agree with Searle that it can’t or perhaps Minsky who says it can? (Please see the notes below for Searle’s Chinese Room argument and more from Minsky.)
2. If it is ultimately possible, then the question becomes ‘should’ we do it? What are the potential implications?

** Recommended Reading & Viewing **
Brain Spotting Part 2 (On YouTube)
Episode2 – Part 1/5:
Episode2 – Part 2/5:
Episode2 – Part 3/5:  (up to 06:55) Approximately 26 minutes in total

Useful FAQ About AI:

Wiki Entry on Philosophy of AI:

Searle’s Chinese Room Argument (Brief):

Marvin Minksy: Why People Think Computers Can’t

John Searle: Minds, Brains and Programs:

Please join us for the discussion on Open Habitat, Second Life on Sunday 21 September at 13:00 PST / 21:00 GMT

Wittgenstein’s beetle – further notes and questions

Further to my initial thoughts for Sunday’s (14 Sept) discussion:

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Group: Second Philosophy
Discussion leader: Sojourna Alexandre / Kathryn Koromilas
Where: Open Habitat, Second Life
When: Sunday, 14 September, 2008
Time: 9pm GMT / 1pm SLT
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Wittgenstein’s Beetle – Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 293
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If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word “pain” means – must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! –Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a “beetle”. No one can look into anyone else’s box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. –Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. –But suppose the word “beetle” had a use in these people’s language? –If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. –No, one can ‘divide through’ by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and designation’ the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.

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BACKGROUND READING
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1. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953/2001). Philosophical Investigations, Section 293 (Beetle), also Sections 243-6, 258, 304, 307-8
2. Philosophy Online summary of Wittgenstein’s beetle analogy
3. Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Private Language
4. Wikipedia entry on Philosophical Investigations, section 3 Private Language and 3.1 Wittgenstein’s Beetle
5. Chapter in Ben Dupre’s book 50 Philosophy Ideas

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QUESTIONS
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1.What is your knee-jerk reaction to Wittgenstein’s little thought experiment about us each having a beetle in a box? [Please have your knee-jerk reaction (of 150 words max) ready to be copy-pasted into the chat box when the discussion leader calls for it.] E.G. Do you agree that we all have our own beetle in a box and that no one else can ever see it or know if it is like their beetle? Do you agree then that when we talk about what is in our own box we are using public language that has meaning when used in social context and is incoherent when used to refer to a private sensation? Your knee-jerk reaction could also be in response to this image: 

2. Let’s move from beetles to pain. We all talk about our own private sensation of pain, using the word pain. We can never know about another’s pain. We can probably deduce that someone is in pain because of the way they behave, but only we can be sure of our own pain. Still, we all use the word pain to refer to our subjective sensation, so much so that in the end we all agree on the meaning of pain even though everyone’s sensation of pain might differ. If it means the same for everyone, if it is a constant, this means it derives its meaning solely from its use in a social and public context and not from any relevance to the private sensation of pain. The private object beetle or the private sensation of pain, according to Wittgenstein, drop out of consideration. What is your response to this? How can we communicate private sensations and ideas if we only have access to a language that is meaningful from its public, not private, use?

3. OK, so what are the implications of Wittgenstein’s beetle in a box analogy for our own philosophical discussions?

Wittgenstein’s beetle or how to have a good philosophical argument.

*Discussion in Second Life, Sunday 14 Sept, 9pm GMT, 1pm SLT, to be led by Sojourna Alexandre (aka Kathryn Koromilas)*

I’ve just been thinking about Wittgenstein’s beetle analogy and the way we hold philosophical discussions.

Do you ever find that a philosophical debate goes in circles with no consensus even on the main points of the discussion topic or the main terms and language used? Sometimes, I think we rely too much on our own subjective meanings and understandings of words, language and philosophical ideas and concepts. And this is where we go wrong. (!?)

Wittgenstein says there is no private language. The language we use to convey things about our private world, to talk about our subjective sensations (of pain, for example), is language formed in the public sphere for the purpose of communicating in the public sphere. This language is guided by various rules, rules we form and agree on, and only has meaning when used in public discourse.

The word pain, therefore, cannot relate to our own personal sensation of pain, but instead only has meaning as some publicly agreed-upon understanding of the fact of pain.

Something like that anyway

Now, consider Wittgenstein’s analogy and our philosophical discussions:

We all arrive happily to philosophical discussions with our own “beetle in a box.” We all have a beetle in a box, but no one is allowed to look in another’s box and so no one ever knows what is in another’s box.

Yet, over time, as a philosophical discussion progresses, everyone talks about what is in their boxes, everyone calls it a beetle and in the end the word “beetle” comes to refer to what is in everyone’s boxes.

But we cannot know what is in another’s box! (Can we?) If we cannot know about the beetle in another’s box, then the word beetle has no meaning in reference to any private and subjective thing, because that thing cannot ever be known. If we try to use the word beetle to refer to what is in the box we are talking about nothing that can be known. In the end, we are making non-sense.

When we come to philosophical discussions, or any other public discourse activity, are we relying too much on our own *private language?*

Are we relying too much on our own private version of the subject? Do we believe that we can communicate to others this private experience of ours with the language tools we have learnt to use for public communication? Can we ever hope to convey something about our subjective senses when the only language tool we have at-hand is a public language? Should we even care? Is there a private language? Or, do you agree with Wittgenstein?

Wittgenstein says there is no private language. The language we use is meaningful only in its public use and this means that the meanings of words used in public discourse have been agreed upon by all who use them and refer to some entity or substance that exists and can be scrutinised. Whatever is going on in our heads, whatever type of beetle is in our box, cannot be communicated. Why? Because there is no language for that. There is no private language.

Well, that’s it for starters.

Event notice, questions and recommended reading (will be short!) to follow.

In fact, reading might just be this

The Enlightenment Project Is It Or Should It Be Under Threat?

The Enlightenment Project Is It Or Should It Be Under Threat?

Discussion to be led by Keith Parker (Oswy Gothly in SL) on Sunday 7 Sept, 9pm GMT, on Open Habitat in Second Life.

Let us continue our debate which began with the issue of fame and has now moved to an analysis of the state of our culture.

I define the Enlightenment Project thus:-

A belief in the power of human rationality to establish reliable, universally recognised scientific and moral knowledge.

A rejection of beliefs that claim truth based solely on authority and tradition.

A belief in the equality of humans in terms of their ability to be rational and an impulse to remove all barriers to the exercise of that rationality via the promotion of individual liberty, autonomy and choice.

A belief in the capacity of humankind to use rationality to promote individual and communal progress.

In asserting these beliefs I stand with those who defend the Enlightenment Project. Mark Rowlands, whose book Fame sparked this debate, is one of those defenders. I have tried to summarise his position in this debate in an accompanying document, (See The Enlightenment Project and the Threat it Faces)

Of course there are many philosophers who in recent times have attacked the whole idea of `Enlightenment` these include Mark Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, who saw the instrumentality of reason leading us to the `Death Camps`, Jacob Talmon and Isaiah Berlin who saw it leading to the Soviet and Fascist Totalitarianism. Jean Francois Lyotard who dismissed `Enlightenment ` pretension to Grand Theories of Progress as useless meta narratives. Michel Foucault who claimed that `Enlightenment` practices concealed new methods for human domination. Edward Said who saw the `Enlightenment as responsible for colonialism and racism. MacIntyre, Taylor, Sandel and the Communitarians who see the objectivist quality of `Enlightenment` moral thinking as corrosive of our traditional values and community bonds.

Little wonder that one critic of `Enlightenment` condemned it in the following terms, “the three ideational colonnades, on which the entire edifice of the Enlightenment rested” were a triumphalist science that was “virile, misanthropic, misogynist, determinist, intolerant and subjugationist”; a “materialist totalitarianism” that “united phenomena as far apart as Patriarchy, Imperialism, Colonization, environmental degradation, [and] destruction of the community and social ties”; and a liberal, progressivist ideology that was “blatantly Stalinist” in that it sanctioned “rabid, catastrophic violence [as] an entirely legitimate means to enshrine and defend [its] wonderful principles.” (1)
So what cultural state are we in? Is vfame really the most worrying sign that our culture has been eroded by postmodern relativism? Is relativism with its rejection of objectivity and universal standards making us more vulnerable to Fundamentalist attack? Are there such things as `Enlightenment ideals that are worth defending anyway?

Questions.

1)Is Rowlands right when he says, “If anything you do counts as self realization, then the idea of self realization is vacuous` and that this implies we need an objective system of standards to rank our choices in life?

2)Is the definition of the `Enlightenment Project` given at the beginning of this introduction correct and sustainable?

3)Is relativism a sustainable defence against fundamentalism?

Reading

1)`The Enlightenment Project and the threat it Faces` Extracts and Analysis of Rowlands
Summary: Mark Rowlands on the enlightenment projects and threats it faces.

2)Foucault, `What is Enlightenment` famous article showing Foucault`s ambiguity to the Enlightenment.

3)Dennis Rasmussen. `Contemporary Political theory as an Anti-Enlightenment Project‘. Very long but the first section is very good as a review of critics of the Enlightenment Project.

4)`Fame by Mark Rowlands A Resume` Resume of Rowlands book fame.

Fame: A Dangerous Obsession?

*This discussion will take place in Second Life on the Open Habitat sim on Sunday, 31 August, at 9pm GMT*

***The transcript of this discussion is now available here: fame_transcript_310808***

The discussion will be led by Keith Parker (aka Oswy Gothly in SL)

READING: fame_markrowlands_summary

Fame: A Dangerous Obsession?

Introduction

We seem to be living in a culture where fame is available to everyone and at least for fifteen minutes. I press my computer search button for Paris Hilton and get 68 million hits. I press again for Socrates and get 12 million. We seem to be living in an age where there is an insatiable desire for gossip, lifestyle items, and personal fashion.

Should I be worried?, professor of philosophy at Miami thinks so. He sees the phenomena of fame or `New Variant Fame` vfame as he terms it, as a dangerous symptom of the decline of western enlightenment culture. It is a symptom of a culture where lives of `weight` based on a choice driven rational assessment of independent values is being eroded by lifestyles that are `light` where any value is as good as any other. Here in a relativistic haze we stagger from one cultural manipulation to another in a lemming like pursuit of talentless vfame personalities.

In this culture people seriously ask the questions:

Is Britney better than Beethoven?
Is Emin better than Rembrandt?
Is Rap better that Auden?
Is Homer Simpson better that Socrates?

Some will even say yes to the former, others will say there is no way of deciding it’s all up to personal choice.

Have we lost our cultural bearings? Or even our cultural marbles? Are we now vulnerable to Fundamentalists who are certain to the point of fanaticism and wish to undermine the Enlightenment where autonomy, self realization and objective evaluation of values represents everything they hate?

It could be that Mark Rowlands is just another conservative academic in a moral panic like Eliot, Leavis, and Scruton before him. Is he really right to fear that the light of the Enlightenment is going out?

This debate will provide a forum to discuss the phenomena of Fame or vfame and what it tells us about our current cultural state.

Are you pessimistic? Are you relaxed? Are Hilton and the Beckhams just a bit of frothy fun or the first sign that the barbarians are at the gates of fortress Western Enlightenment?

Questions.

The debate will consider some or all of the following questions:

1) Mark Rowlands says that in the past fame was a way of tracking deserved respect. Now we have vfame where the link between fame and achievement has been broken. Why is there such an obsession today with people who are only famous for being famous?

2) Is Britney better than Beethoven?
Is Emin better than Rembrandt?
Is Rap better than Auden?
Is Homer Simpson better than Socrates?
Yes? No? Can`t Tell? Don`t Care? Explain your choice.

3) Is it true as Rowlands and others have said that our culture is being undermined by moral or value relativism? Is it not true that there are objective standards that guide us to a better life and are we in danger of abandoning them and our defence against Fundamentalism?

Second Philosophy Facebook Group

SECOND PHILOSOPHY is an open group on Facebook for all those (current and former students and all others with an interest in philosophy) who wish to discuss issues of philosophical nature in a variety of formats.

The group wil be hosting a series of events, debates, discussions, lectures and study groups in the virtual platform called Second Life.

Access to this format is free and instructions about access are posted on this site. This group provides a coordinated facility to follow up discussions and debates that originated in Second Life.

Our content will be the major issues of metaphysics, epistemology, moral and political philosophy, aesthetics, philosphy of science, as well as discussion of current events from a philosophical perspective.

*This group is acting in collaboration with Oxford University Online as part of their programme of investigation of new formats to access philosophy. The group however is an independent initiative of students.*