Week 10: Conclusion

After 10 weeks of the Senior Project, we have finally come to the end! It's been an interesting last week, as I did not meet with my professor and instead worked on how I am going to condense everything I learned into the presentation. As many of you may know by now, I don't believe there is one set answer for all as to what you should know for your own life. There are many factors to take into account, such as family values, personal beliefs, different perceptions of costs and benefits, the list goes on. Although there are so many things involved with this question, I can't wait to share it all with you during my presentation in May.

Throughout the past 10 weeks, I've learned a lot when it comes to approaching philosophical topics. For one, many of the discussions that my professor and I had were oriented towards logic. Instead of thinking in only the realm of hypotheticals, we used a lot of logic to deduce what is best or worse for the individual, something that was unexpected when I first started the Senior Research project. Another thing I didn't quite understand well, but will continue to work on in the future, is my ability to comprehend complex texts. This was probably the most difficult part of the Senior Research Project, as I constantly had to re-read the same chapters in order to understand the claim that the author was putting out there. If you ever plan to take part in the Senior Research Project yourself, make sure you can understand your sources, and that your sources are relevant to your research question, as this was my biggest mistake.

I am going to end this week's post sooner, as there isn't much material to discuss, but I wish to say thank you to anyone and everyone who paid attention to my posts through the course of the project. I'd like to thank my On-Site Mentor, Mr. Nair, for being so willing to help me along this journey, and Mr. Lambert, my Faculty Advisor, for helping me so many times throughout this project. Thank you, and I'll see you guys during the final presentations!

Week 9: An Interesting Game

Hi Guys! We are almost at the end of the Senior Research Project, and it's been quite the journey. This week, Mr. Nair and I went on a very slight tangent into the idea of beliefs. Although they are not directly related to my research, beliefs are inherently different from knowledge as they are not always true, whereas knowledge is true information. Beliefs can be argued for or against, whereas knowledge can't. For example, I can unreliably guess the age of any individual, and I can even believe my guess, however, that is mere belief, it is not knowledge unless I ask for that person's age and they respond honestly.

During this week, Mr. Nair explained a very interesting game to me regarding beliefs. Let's say you have a piece of paper in front of you with 100 true or false statements, you write true if you believe that the statement is true, or false if you believe it is false. Let's add another aspect to the game, if you get it right, you gain a point, and if you get it wrong, you lose a point, but if you leave it blank nothing happens. Obviously, the goal of this is to maximize the number of points you can get. Now, assume that all these statements are related to a topic that you are relatively familiar with, something like Calculus or US History. Because there is a penalty for getting it wrong, you will mostly think through each of the questions individually and do your best to get as many right as possible. But if the penalty was increased substantially, let's say you lose 100 points if you get it wrong, then unless you were absolutely sure of yourself, you would leave the question blank.

Now, let's transition the idea behind this type of game to a real-life example. Let's say you believe there is a fire in a theater. If you yell "FIRE" to warn everyone, there will most likely be people who will be trampled because of the fear and panic that arises from the danger of a fire. Therefore, the penalty for believing there is a fire, yelling fire, and then being wrong is pretty high. However, if you are right, then there still might be trampling, but the major danger was avoided. Just like with the game, you will not yell fire unless you are absolutely sure, due to the possible penalty of being wrong.

I find this game extremely interesting because of its wide applications to real life. In taking into account a belief, you have to address both the benefits and costs of believing it. If you were to traverse a bridge that seems to be dilapidated, you would want to be sure that it could support your weight before actually going across. The applications this game has are extremely wide. Anyways, that's all for this week! There are a lot of subtleties when it comes to this idea so feel free to ask about some unique examples or ideas that you guys have regarding the topic.

Week 8: Hate Speech and Waldron

Hi Guys! I hope you all had a wonderful week as we are now heading into the final stretch of the Senior Research Project. During this week I read into a book called "The Harm in Hate Speech" by Jeremy Waldron. It is a very interesting read, and I recommend it to anyone who is even partially interested in the topic. As I said before, I wanted to research further into the topic of 'false information' because of Mill's theory where he believes that all information is valuable because it could help lead to the truth. Put simply, over time, Mill believed we could use false information to our advantage as a method for development and progress. 

Hate Speech is often given the reputation of being a mechanism for people to spread racism and hatred toward the minority groups of a society, a characteristic in which many of us would agree that this would not help in terms of development. Waldron focuses a lot on this topic, saying that this form of hate speech takes away from the "dignity" of the individuals composing the ostracized minority groups. He defines dignity as the quality everyone has regardless of their physical qualities in which all individuals are treated equally. He believes dignity to be this characteristic in which you think of anyone as 'normal'. Waldron believes this is a quality that every free society should have, and the ability for hate speech to demean this quality puts it as an inherent harm to society. 

However, what would be a situation in which hate speech could actually prove itself to be useful? Suppose that there is a protest or speech against a law such as the draft, and the protestors offer a feasible solution to the draft. If this were true, than the government could consider this solution and if it works out, than its population could be more content with it. The point here is that hate speech could be used as a mechanism for improvement and progress if it is used for criticism without demeaning a minority group. When it comes to the government, the officials and politicians have chosen an optional role in gaining power and maintaining the welfare of a country, whereas an individual in a minority group has no option when it comes to their skin color, or the crimes that another individual did. Within the book, Waldron implies that because people in government had the option to participate in politics and the bureaucracy, then it is ok for hate speech to be geared towards the government itself, instead of minority groups. 

Anyways, that's all for this week! Tell me what you guys think about Waldron's ideas or if you have any interesting theories yourselves.

Week 7: Fish

Hi Guys! This week I will be talking about a different perspective then that of Mill's when it comes to politics, specifically free speech and democracy, and it would be that of Stanley Fish. Before we get into that, one very interesting trend that I have observed throughout my project, is that I often do not read a piece that is directly related to my topic, but instead I read something different, usually about civil liberties and politics, and then we create an analogy between that and my research question. The primary reason for this is because most philosophers directly relate knowledge and actionability, and that makes perfect sense. I mean, what's the point of knowing something if you can't do anything with that newly acquired knowledge, right? Instead, I am trying to steer away from that, to find more interesting and diverse theories on the subject, and Fish's theory will interest you.
As a refresher, Mill's theory when it came to free speech was that governments should allow all speech so long as nobody is harmed directly by that speech, which is almost everything. Fish, on the other hand, takes a more conservative approach, in that he believes speech should only be limited if it is incompatible with the structure of the specific society itself. For example, if hate speech limits the possible advancements of a democratic society, then it should be prohibited. Fish's asks the question "Is there anything gained or lost by prohibiting a certain form of speech?" Depending on the answer to that question, then speech will either be kept or prohibited. This is a much more practical approach, as it does not rely on broad philosophical conclusions, but rather what the society believes it needs at a specific point in time. For example, Fish believes that speech should be limited within environments such as the military, where the primary values are 'hierarchy' and 'authority'. So any form of speech that goes against authority and hierarchy should be removed according to Fish. Another example is that a teacher is limited to what they can say during a class or lecture, but those limits go away when in the comfortable environment of the home.
Now, if we were to create an analogy between Fish's ideas and my research question, then it is possible that the limits of what knowledge we can deem necessary changes with the underlying values of both the setting as well as the individual. This isn't necessarily true, but it is certainly an interesting theory to reflect upon.
Anyways, that is all for this week! Please comment on what you guys think or if you have any theories, go ahead and tell me about them! See you guys next week!

Week 6: Summary

Welcome back after spring break! I took mine last week, as did most of you, and I ended up staying at home for the most part, it was definitely a relaxing week. I wanted to summarize the research I have done so far as well as my plans for the second half of the Senior Research Project. As you all know, I am looking into what kinds of knowledge are necessary and the different kinds of arguments that can justify why these pieces of knowledge should even be deemed necessary in the first place. I have limited this question to just democratic societies, as is relevant to the country we are living in, and the majority of countries around the world.
What I should make a distinction in, and I haven't yet done so, is that I have only researched into 'knowledge' so far, and within philosophy, this definition refers to information that is true or correct. Meaning I have only analyzed methods in which we can judge knowledge as opposed to actual false information. As such, my plan for the next few weeks is to analyze the different arguments for things such as 'hate speech' or false information to be deemed as necessary. Off the bat, we would think false information is unnecessary within a democratic society, but Mill is one example that seems to disagree with this, as seen through the harm principle, and I wish to explore this theory with other philosophers.
As for now, the primary acceptable theories to judge the relevance and need of certain types of knowledge are actionability, and happiness. These two differ, in that a piece of knowledge is relevant if it increases your overall happiness and vice versa. This is the same with actionability, in that the more actionable a type of knowledge is, the more relevant and possibly necessary it is. And these two theories will often not lead to the same answer. For example, if your spouse was cheating on you, and you didn't know, would you like to know or find out if you were in that situation? The actionability theory would suggest you should learn that piece of information, yet because this knowledge would decrease your overall happiness, the theory of happiness would deem this piece of information as unnecessary.
Anyways, that's all for this week! I hope you guys had an awesome break and see you next week!

Week 5: Spring Break

Hi Guys! Unfortunately, I will not make a complete post this week as I am using this week for Spring Break, so it matches up with your vacation.