Functatus Excessivus...

"Once upon a very long time ago, during the reign of Ronald von Recht, when Philosophy was queen of the Sciences (her kingdom was small and impoverished), there taught at the Majestic Institute of Tutelage an assistant professor of philosophy named Functatus Excessivus. Functatus marvelled at all the wonderful things to drink: clear-liquids-in-green-glasses, clear-liquids-in-blue-glasses, clear liquids-in-red-glasses and many others besides. But being a scholar of no mean scope, he was also taken by the abundance of games he found to play - guessing games, athletic contests and, most exciting of all, tenure roulette. Functatus dedicated himself to studying these two kinds of wonders. Beginning with the liquids, he devoted several years to sampling as many clear-liquids-in-glasses as his NSF grant allowed, first hoping to detect, but then finally despairing of finding, what made them all so nourishing. They seemed to have nothing in common, each obviously being of a different natural kind: red-glass, green-glass, blue glass. One day, even as his colleagues whispered in the halls about Functatus' bleak tenure prospects, he sampled a liquid-in-a-large bourbon-glass and thereupon was visited by the mysterious muse, Lisperata, who revealed to him that he had been searching for a phantom in his quest for the hidden essence common to clear-liquids in-glasses. Rather, Lisperata said, he should proclaim that despite their obvious physical differences, each clear-liquid-in-a-glass served much the same function. Each could slake one's thirst, revive wilted daisies and so on. Functatus gratefully concluded that a clear-liquid-in-a-glass was whatever had just such a network of relations. "Never mind the stuff! Look for the function!" How happy Functatus was. Even if he were to lose at tenure roulette, at least he had a slogan."

J. Christopher Maloney's very creative argument against functionalism. 

Tale

A strange and beautiful thing, sent to me by one of my dearest.

From Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations

 translated from the French by John Ashbery

"A Prince was annoyed at always being occupied with perfecting vulgar generosities. He foresaw amazing revolutions in love, and suspected that his wives could come up with something better than complacency adorned with sky and luxury. He wished to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and satisfaction. Whether or not this was an aberration of piety, he wanted it. He possessed at the very least a rather broad human power.

All the women who had known him were murdered. What wanton pillaging of the garden of beauty! Beneath the saber, they gave him their blessing. He ordered no new ones.—The women reappeared.

He killed his followers, after the hunt or after drinking.—They all followed him.

He amused himself with cutting the throats of thoroughbred animals. He torched palaces. He hurled himself on people and hacked them to pieces.—The crowds, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts still lived.

Is it possible to become ecstatic amid destruction, rejuvenate oneself through cruelty! The people didn’t complain. No one offered the support of his own opinions.

One evening he was galloping fiercely. A Genie appeared, of an ineffable, even unavowable beauty. From his face and bearing sprang the promise of a multiple and complex love! of an unspeakable, even unbearable love! The Prince and the Genie probably disappeared into essential health. How could they not die of it? So they died together.

But this Prince passed away, in his palace, at a normal age. The Prince was the Genie. The Genie was the Prince.

Wise music is missing from our desire."

Philosophy reveals things...

"The key data here come from studies in which subjects were given brief vignettes and then asked to determine whether particular behaviors within those vignettes were performed ‘intentionally.’ By systematically varying aspects of the vignettes, researchers can determine which factors are influencing people’s intuitions. It can thereby be shown that these intuitions show a systematic sensitivity to moral considerations.

Here is one of the vignettes:

The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, ‘We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.’
The chairman of the board answered, ‘I don’t care at all about harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.’
They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was harmed.

Faced with this vignette, most subjects (85%) said that the chairman intentionally harmed the environment [1].
One might think that this judgment was based entirely on certain information about the agent’s mental states (e.g., the fact that he specifically knew the policy would harm the environment). But it seems that there is more to the story. For suppose we leave all of the agent’s mental states the same but change the moral status of the behavior by simply replacing the word ‘harm’ with ‘help.’ The vignette then becomes:

The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, ‘We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, and it will also help the environment.’ The chairman of the board answered, ‘I don’t care at all about helping the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.’ They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was helped.

Faced with this second vignette, only 23% of subjects said that the chairman intentionally helped the environment [1]."

From Joshua Knobe - "Theory of Mind and Moral Cognition: Exploring the Connections"

"Shopping"

I emerged back into the dark rainy neverworld of downtown San Francisco in the holidays, from Macy's - having grudgingly gone in for my yearly replacement of a certain bottle of makeup. And standing right outside the door was a skinny, toothless, old man, wild white hair, holding out an upside down baseball cap with a few coins in it. "It's my birfday. 70 years old today" with an upward intonation on "birf" and "70" and a doe-eyed look that tugged so hard at my heart. I didn't stop amidst the traffic of shoppers to take out a soggy dollar from my dilapidated barely functional wallet to hand it to him. I looked instead. I looked at him for instants longer than anyone usually looks at anyone who's a stranger on the street and I hope it said something cause I couldn't say anything. Union Square, the nauseating glitz and glam of Christmas decorations, the ultra-elaborate window displays poised to strike the heart of consumerist desires, the overly bedizen people with overly large shopping bags, the wet breaths and sweaty rained on faces, the dusking day with its darkening sky and the pouring, pouring, pouring rain. And this old toothless man. I was sorry I didn't give him a dollar and I was sorry I even had to wonder if he was making up the fact that was his birthday. I wanted to cry as I walked away replaying his words and his voice and the look on his face. I wanted to cry but I was numb.

Dearest Nietzsche

Revisiting Nietzsche, and every time I do, I wonder how I could have ever left him.

"philosophy opens up a refuge for man where no tyranny can reach: the cave of inwardness, the labyrinth of the breast...that is where the lonely hide; but there too they encounter their greatest danger . . . " - from Schopenhauer as Educator

"Can you give yourself your own evil and your own good and hang your own will over yourself as a law? Can you be your own judge and avenger of your law? Terrible it is to be alone with the judge and avenger of your own law."

"He who cannot obey himself is commanded." - both from "On the Way of the Creator" in Thus Spoke Zarathurstra