It's Fun To Do Bad Things

The great sage Oprah Winfrey says that the #6 thing that she knows for sure is "what you believe has more power thsn what you dream or wish or hope for. You become what you believe". One morning, while I was eating my bowl of peanut butter crunch, I watched the local news cover a story about a little boy who, along with his little kid buddy, stole his grandmother's car and went for a joyride. Eventually, the pair was stopped by the local fuzz. When the boy was questioned as to what possessed him to take his grandma's car, he simply stated, "It's fun to do bad things". It amazed me that a seven year old kid had already come to the revelation that it iis, indeed fun to do bad things. This is what this kid believes. If you ask a psychiatrist, they'll try to convince you that, by the time that a child reaches the age of seven, a professional mind shrinker can tell which children are destined for a life of crime. That's what they say. I usually take such forecasts with a grain of salt. But in the case of that kid, I wholeheartedly believed that that kid was going to end up in the poke much sooner than later. After I stopped laughing about a seven year old child declaring that doing bad things is "fun", I thought, 'wait a minute. This kid stated a belief. He said that he believes that it is fun to do bad things!'. Obviously, most people would find something wrong about what the kid said. But why? Then I thought about Oprah's #6 thing she knows for sure. It strikes us as wrong because we believe, although we do not often expressly say so, that what we believe has to do with who we are. Who we are, in turn, affects how we act. In short, what we believe affects how we act. When we say that we believe any thing (a proposition, an idea, etc), we often ask why do we believe one thing as opposed to another. What we are looking for when we ask this question of ourselves is a reason why we would accept a particular belief as true. We want justification for our beliefs. If our beliefs are justified, we are entitled to hold them. We think that our justified beliefs are true or more than likely to be true than not. This is essentially what Oprah is saying when she says that a belief "has more power" than a wish or hope. We often wish or hope for things that we know are based on shoddy evidence. Wishes and hopes often are unrealistic. (I was going to give an example concerning a wish and why I became a philosophy major, but I don't think that to reveal it here would be appropriate. But trust me, it was very unrealistic). Beliefs carry an idea of truth, or that they represent some thing in the real world. If we look at the matter psychologically, we know the axiom that we become what we believe (unless you're Andy Warhol, and you believe that we become what other people think that we are). So, if what we believe (by way of justification) is true (or more likely to be true -- perhaps necessarily so), then what we believe has power. So say, that I believe that it is fun to do bad things. What's the problem with believing that? I say that I am not a philosopher, not interested in philosophy (it's a bunch of bullshit anyway), and that whether or not I hold justified beliefs is of no consequence. In the real world, I say, none of that philosophy crap really matters. So there. If I say to the epistemologist that I don't care about justifying my beliefs, can he still "get" me on what I believe? Am I still committing a wrong in believing that it's fun to do bad things? Unfortunately he can. The thing is, is that when we consider our beliefs, actions, etc, from a philosophical point of view, we rarely look at it from one side. That is to say, our beliefs in God and the afterlife are rarely strictly ontological issues. Our belief or lack of a belief in a supreme deity affects our moral choices as well. Likewise, our beliefs and whether we are justified in believing them not only carry an epistemic burden, but also a moral burden as well. What we believe affects how we act, and how we act is a question of morality. If we look at Oprah's statement, "what you believe has more power...", and we think about what we think of when we use words like "power", it's easy to see that words like "power" have moral implications. If we are going to endow something with force, it must not only be epistemically accounted for, but morally justified as well. Our actions carry force. When we act, we affect not just ourselves, but others. A child who goes for a joyride in his grandmother's car affected (and potentially affected) the lives of all of those who were involved: the children, the grandmother, the police who chased the duo, anybody on the street who may have been hit during the chase, and so on. When those childern took the car, they were not only acting physically, but morally. A better example of how this works is William Clifford's story of the shipowner who reasoned that his ship was seaworthy despite the fact that his ship was old, needed repairs, and had always made it back home. The shipowner believed that his ship was safe in the face of evidence that it was not. As expected, the ship sank, and people were killed. The shipowner was not only unjustified epistemically, he had committed a moral wrong for believing that his ship was seaworthy when it was not. The shipowner, according to Clifford, had no justification for believing that the ship would sail without incident. He had based his wrong belief on inadequate evidence (namely that his ship needed repairs and was old...). If asked, he could offer us no good reason why he believed his ship could make the journey. So, Clifford says, the act of believing in a wrong belief is wrong. This is, because what we believe leads to action. Clifford says, "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence". I think that what Clifford says is true. If the way or what I believe is connected to how I act, then is I believe in things that are wrong, I am certain to act accordingly. My neighbor sometimes stands on her driveway and stares down the neighborhood. If I were the paranoid type, I could believe that my neighbor is stalking me. But, other than the fact that I see my neighbor standing on her driveway, do I have evidence for believing that she is indeed stalking me? No. Not really. Besides the fact that she can make an equal claim about my always staring at her (after all, how would I know that she's always looking at my house if I'm not also staring at hers?), I have no compelling evidence that she's maddogging me and what I do. What I found more amazing is the fact that Hollywood is filled with Clifford-esque situations! I was watching the movie Jaws last Saturday. I know that Beetlejuice said that The Exorcist gets funnier with each viewing, but my choice is definitely Jaws. That whole Quint telling the story about the USS Indianapolis being torpedoed and the survivors getting eaten by sharks is just plain funny. Don't get me wrong, it is a horrific story, but the whole Jack Sparrow delivery takes any of the tragedy out of it. (If you want to see a pretty funny riff on that scene, I suggest checking out the Fox comedy Get A Life, starring Chris Elliott. In an episode, he gets stuck in a homemade submarine with his dad in a bathtub, and launches into Robert Shaw's monologue. It's freaking hillarious.) Anyway. Chief Brody, based on the fact that a local swimmer has been chomped by something bigger than a goldfish, wants to close the local beach. He has adequate evidence for believing that there is a killer shark patrolling the waters off of Amity Island. Namely, the death of Chrissy, the local girl, and the very much in public eating of Alex Kintner by said shark. The mayor wants to say that the girl was killed in a boating accident. The mayor also believes that the shark that is caught by some fishermen is the shark that killed the boy (but he refuses to agree to an autopsy of the shark). Chief Brody, Quint, and that dude that Richard Dreyfuss played -- I think it was Matt something, decide to kill the shark. That's a little besides the point, but the point is, is that Chief Brody believed that there was a great white shark that had made the waters off of Amity Island it's feeding ground. He was right. He had adequate evidence for believing so. And, we know that, so far as the moral highground goes, Brody definintely has it. Sticking with the nautical theme, the same goes for the crew of the USS Caine in the film The Caine Mutiny. Captain Queeg, played by Humprey Bogart, is clearly out of his mind. The executive officers decide, after a series of increasingly disturbing events, to find a way to relieve Queeg of his command. After Queeg nearly loses the Caine in a storm, the officers decide to forcefully take command of the vessel. Even though they faced courtmartial, they knew that their belief -- that Queeg was batshit insane -- was right. They had more than enough evidence for believing that Queeg was mentally unstable. Additionally, they had a moral duty to take the ship from Queeg. If they allowed Queeg to keep command of his ship, the lives of the crew were in danger. This movie has a really cool ending. They totally diss Fred Mac Murray. This dude throws a drink in his face and all of the guys walk out like he was a dishonored Klingon. They should have kicked his ass! Ok, that's great -- if we're right. But being right isn't always the case. Our beliefs are flat wrong more often than we'd like to admit.Unfortunately, like when we're right, we also act on our beliefs when we're wrong. In George A Romero's Day of the Dead, the character Rhodes, after having spent what we can presume to be years in an underground bunker, is more than a little mad. He begins to suspect that the scientists are acting against the interests of Rhodes and his men. Does he really have any evidence to believe this? No, he does not. Rhodes becomes so wrapped-up in his paranoia, that he kills several of the scientists and facilitates the breech of the facility by a horde of flesh-eating zombies. As a result of Rhodes' wrong beliefs, many people die. By the way, stay CLEAR of the re-make of Day of the Dead. Awful! In the Cohen bros. flick, Burn After Reading, Linda Litzke (played by Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (played by Brad Pitt), believe that the disk found in the ladies' dressing room of Hardbodies gym, contains top secret information. Chad reasons that the fact that there are department heads' names and dates that it obviously means that the information is classified (it's not. It's the notes for a book that is being written by Osborne Cox, played by John Malkovich). The "evidence" they have for believing that the disk has secret info is scant -- it's Chad's assumption (problem 1). Believing that the disk has information that may be of some interest to other parties, they attempt to pass it along to the Russians. This makes matters worse. The fact that they're wrong eventually leads to the death of one of the pair. I'm not going to say which one, but it's the one who starred in other films such as Legends of the Fall and Interview With the Vampire. This is what Clifford was getting at when he condemned our holding beliefs on insufficient evidence. In the worst-case scenerio, people get killed. When those people die, they die because we failed to believe what is true. Their deaths are on us because we failed epistemically and morally. And so, we bear a doubly heavy burden. So, what does this mean about Oprah's advice, "what you believe has more power than what you dream or wish or hope for. You become what you believe"? What it means, is that it is true that our beliefs have a moral obligation that we owe to others. If we believe the wrong things, even if doing it is fun, we are responsible for others who may be hurt or affected by our actions. Lastly, the reason why we must believe only what we are morally entitled to believe is obvious when we look at those who do wrong and believe that it is good to do so. Those are the people that we should not aspire to be. We should, when we look at them, remind ourselves that those individuals are not... well, they're not good people. A person who believes that it is fun to do bad things will more than likely end up on the bad side of life. And that's not much fun in the long run, is it?

The Creepiest Song...Ever!

"I gave a girl a ride in my wagon" opens one of the most creepiest songs ever written in the history of the pop era. For those who don't know, that statement is the opening line from the 1975 diddy "Chevy Van" by Sammy Johns. Clocking in at a mellow two minutes, fifty-nine seconds, the adventure of a young man, a loose hitchhiker, and their, well, let's say (alleged) "encounter", was (as it is said) a typical portrait of the free-lovin' easy-goin' days of the '70s. Whatever. The song goes a little like this: Boy drives shaggin' wagon, boy picks up hot hitchhiking chick, hot hitchhiking chick immediately and inexplicably loses consciousness, when she awakens, she is struck by the overwhelming desire to take the shaggin' waggon's captain "by the hand" and do him. After their moments of love, boy drops the hitchhiker off somewhere south of BFE, and never sees her again. At least until the paternity suit ( I added that). What I find truly interesting about the song is in the chorus. Free-wheelin' Sammy makes the statement, "she's gonna love me in my chevy van (and that's alright with me)". Hold on, I think, let's back this one up. "She's gonna love me in my chevy van"?!? One, that's a pretty big statement to make, and two, I thought, that sounds like a mighty big EPISTEMIC claim. She's "gonna" love you? Well, how exactly does he know she will? Maybe he just picked up Susan Atkins? But, Sammy makes the claim that she's "gonna" love him. Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds worth of claiming. And once again I ask how does he know for sure? I'm almost certain that his explanation will fall along the lines of something like this: 'Well, whenever I picked up hitchhikers before, they always give it up to me. So I assumed that this chick would be no different. Hey, at least I didn't charge her for gas money!' Leaving the comment about gas money aside, what Sammy's answer is, is straight up induction. We do this kind of thinking all the time. Based on past experiences, we make assumptions about how a present (or future) situation will be. Hume's famous example was stating that the sun will come up tomorrow. We say this because we have observed in the past that the sun comes up every morning, so we assume that tomorrow will be no different. We say the sun will come up tomorrow. And most of the time this kind of thinking works. You can assume, based on prior experience, that a hitchhiker will have sex with you. But there's the glitch: This works until we run into a situation where our line of reasoning is wrong and the present or the future doesn't resemble the past (and this folks, is the problem of induction!). So, let's say that Sammy wants to make the claim that his sleeping? passed out? riding companion will in fact share her love with him. How does he know that she will? How can Sammy say that he is justified in believing that she will? Enter epistemology 101: knowledge as justified true belief. We know that Sammy believes that the hitchhiker will make love to him (it sounds so silly using the term "make love", doesn't it?), but we get the sense that Sammy wants more than to merely believe that claim; he wants to be justified in doing so. To say that we truly "know" something means more than to say that we believe either this or that claim. We would want to say that we also have proper reasons for believing what we believe, or justification. Justification is important because (epistemically speaking) justification makes it more likely that our beliefs are true (or at least more likely to be true). I think that it goes without saying why we want true beliefs. But, in a nutshell, true (or TRUE, or True -- depending on how much you want to emphasize the concept) are our foundations for knowledge. If we had no true beliefs, then well... you don't want to know. All I can say is that there would be no American Idol (and nobody would like that). This, justified true belief, that is, is the traditional view of knowledge. It's this: 1) s believes p 2) p is true 3) s has good reason (justification) to believe p. 1,2 &3 are necessary conditions for knowledge. Which means if we ain't got all three, we don't know. So, how can Sammy go from merely believing that his hitchhiking sleeping beauty is going to sex him up to saying that he knows that she will? Well, by employing a method for justification of course! Let's look at two of my faves coherentism and reliabilism. According to coherentism, a belief is true if it coheres (or is consistent with) our other held beliefs (what we already believe to be true). So for example, Sammy sees the hitchhiker on the side of the road. His system of held beliefs may include the following: -- I drive a sweet chevy van -- Hippy chicks esp. hitchhiking ones, are easy -- Chicks dig dudes with sweet chevy vans -- Chicks who sleep with moonlight dancing off of their hair, wake up and take you by the hand will want to have sex with you, seriously. Sammy's belief, "she's gonna love me in my chevy van" which is to say, 'I believe that this chick will have sex with me' seems to cohere with his other beliefs (in fact, you could say that Sammy hit the jackpot). But there's a problem here. The truth of Sammy's belief relies on Sammy's other beliefs. Sammy may be wrong. He may have an entire system of false beliefs. In that case, even if his belief was true (in virtue if his other beliefs), he is not justified in making the claim that his belief is true. So what's Sammy to do? He can use another means of justification. Let's try reliabilism. The reliabilist (is that right?) says, sure the coherentist has his thoughts to rely on, but that's the problem in itself. We need something more. If you got whacked on the head so hard that everything you saw had dancing elves around it, no matter whether the dancing elves fit consistently into every belief you had about the world, your "true" statements would not be true (by virtue of the fact that there are no dancing elves). So, the reliabilist says, we need more. Justification, he says, is determined by the reliability of the process by which we form our beliefs. So, instead of relying on other beliefs, the reliabilist uses memory, good reasoning, introspection, etc. to arrive at beilefs that are true or more likely to be true. We can't justify our beliefs by mere guesses, or by our emotions or what we want to be true. So, if Sammy was of sound mind and body (i.e. he hadn't smoked too much of the "reefer"), then given the reliability of his belief-forming processes, Sammy is likely to produce true beliefs. And justified in claiming the likelihood of his beliefs being true. All said and done, I think that Sammy did smoke too much of the locoweed, drove nowhere picked up nobody, and made the whole thing up. Just proving that there's a reason why they call it dope.

I Usually Don't Ask Open-Ended Questions, Because I Usually Have All the Answers

Kant opens the first section of his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals with the statement: "Nothing in the world -- indeed nothing even beyond the world -- can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a GOOD WILL". Kant says that there are qualities that may be good and desirable (intelligence, courage, resoluteness, etc.), but these qualities can be bad if they are not accompanied by a good will. A good will, according to Kant, corrects the influences on the mind. Kant states that the will is good, not because of what effects follow from having a good will, but because the good is intrinsically good or good in itself. For Kant, all moral decisions are emanate from a sense of duty, and our sense of duty contains good will. I know that this question might seem like it has an obvious answer, and I used to think so myself, but what is a bad will? I know that what I just asked is one of those questions that scream out "duh", like asking someone who steps into the room soaking wet, shaking off an umbrella if it's raining outside. Or hearing the dude next to you stomach growl, and asking him,"hungry, eh?". It's pretty easy when someone's intent is fairly obvious, like when some dude carrying a pike, covered in blood, wearing an "I H8 Philosophy Professors" T-shirt asks where the philosophy department is. It dosen't take a stroke of genius to figure out the the guy's intent is to do some harm -- especially when it's nowhere near April Fool's Day and it's not Halloween. There is the bad will that we can see -- the murderer, the thief, the starlet intent on launching a music career. But some will is what we might call ambiguous. What do we do when the intent of the will is not so clear? I thought of sticking a personal situation in right here about something that I did that I'm still not sure as to whether my will in this situation was good or bad. (Take your guesses everybody) But since I've thought it over, I decided that I would save myself the embarassment ( not to mention any possible bridge burning) and grab an example from my collection of DVDs. About a year ago, I was made familiar with a website called selectsmart. The point of this website is to spend hours taking surveys to figure out what kind of whatever you are. They should call this website hours from your life. So, instead of studying philosophy, I was taking this survey on which horror movie protagonist I'm most like. Much to my delight, I'm like the character Dr. Herbert West from the movie Re-Animator, which just happens to be my favorite horror movie. Talk about serendipity. To those who are not familiar with the Stuart Gordon classic Re-Animator, here's the plot in a nutshell: a couple of med students at Miskatonic University discover the secret for re-animating dead people. They decide to see if it works by testing it on a cat named Rufus and then on the cadavers in the pathology ward. All hell breaks loose when one of the students beheads a professor, reanimates the professor's head and body, and eventually lands himself in a fantastic battle royale with the professor's intestines. Now that I'm done with the plot. In the film, Herbert West discovers the key to reanimation, which, in and of itself, isn't bad. You might say that someone who makes such a discovery is motivated by good will. If we can cheat death, think of all that land we'd be saving from becoming cemetaries. We could put WalMarts up everywhere! Ok, and a few Trader Joes. And it seems that, at first, Herbert is intent on making genuine medical progress. But, somewhere that same intent loses it's good-willish patina and takes a turn for the bad. We know that when Herbert kills Dr. Hill, he is motivated by a bad will. He wants to kill Hill because Dr. Hill is in his way. That's easy. And when the bodies start piling up, including the dean of the university and Dan's girlfriend Meg, we need not consult the utlitarian calculus to figure out that Herbert's quest to revive the dead was bad. But there it goes again. We can say that what Herbert West did was inherently bad, but how was it so? At what point did West's intent turn from good to bad? Since Kant tells us we cannot rely on consequences, we cannot point to the pile of dead bodies as evidence of Herbert's bad will. But we know that, perhaps on some intuitive level, Herbert's intent had changed -- although it stayed the same. I realize that what I'm saying might sound like a little bit of goobledygook here. And there's a reason for that. It's because there are times when someone's intent may be the same, but somehow the intent may seem to be aimed at doing more harm than good. What makes things worse, is the fact that, in addition to not being able to pin down how a good intent can become bad, we may not be aware that our own will is bad. We may be operating under the supposition (delusion) that our own intentions are good. But how do we know what a bad will is, or when our own will is bad? The question is not so much what constitutes a bad will than how do we know what a bad will is? Perhaps the issue of whether a person's will is good or bad is as much an epistemic question than an ethical consideration. And that's where I land my open-ended question. I'd like to know what the answer is, because honestly I have no idea.

Spotting the Golden Egg

* I owe a debt of gratitude to Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit and Professor Davidson's exclamations of the word "bullshit" in epsitemology class... which started me on this subject in the first place. And to both, I extend my deepest apologies. I was a dedicated political science student. And, as any student of politics knows, what political science is really about is the art of bullshitting. Bullshitting is the politician's medium. Their finely crafted pieces of tauroscatologic masterpieces have no rival. They are Rembrandts in a room full of kindergarten fingerpainters. Politicians dispense bullshit to the public as freely as co-eds give it up in Cancun during spring break. And I was becomming a master. But then, philosophy happened. I found myself surrounded by people who claimed that philosophy was the real thing -- a no bullshit zone. Philosophy wasn't just opinions and rhetoric, my professors said, but was logically correct, and at times irrefutable. But why did it sound to me like so much of the bullshit that I was hearing in poly sci? Worse yet, I soon discovered that, along with my growing suspicions that all philosophy is bullshit, I found myself growing increasingly disturbed by my feelings towards some of my fellow philosophy students -- I began to think that some of them were assholes. As time progressed, I realized that my impressions weren't mere delusion or some resentment held over from poly sci, some of my fellow students really were assholes -- big ones at that. And that led me to think: is it possible that there is a connection between being a bullshitter and being an asshole? Is it possible for us to investigate, not only who the purveyors of bullshit are, but also if there are personality traits that are common to bullshitters, jerks, wiseasses, smartasses, and all other people that we would just as soon toss out of an five story window than to offer a lift out of a crime-ridden neighborhood? My answer was yes. I had noticed that some of my fellow philosophy students had a high opinion of themselves. In and of itself, good self esteem is a good thing, but this high-falutinness was something out of the ordinary. For a time I wasn't sure if they were actually smarter or if they had been, by way of the professors, convinced that they were smarter than everyone else. I had observed that a fair number of students dispensed a fair amount of bullshit -- usually in the form of learned proclaimations that were meant to sound profound and convincing. For the most part, however, their statments did nothing more than sound like something sounding profound and convincing. All I knew for sure was that there was a definite type of personality that I observed among the students that had an over inflated opinion of their own mental capacity. Before I reached any definitve conclusion that they were assholes, I decided that I would ask other people to see if they saw what I thought that I was seeing. After conducting a very unscientific poll, I had reached the conclusion that it wasn't just me who saw it -- philosophy students tended to be assholes. There was a confirmed connection between people who thought highly of themselves and bullshitting. So, by way of induction, I concluded that those who dispensed bullshit tend to hav a high opinion of themselves, and those who tend to have a high opinion of themselves tend to be catagorized as assholes. I had to admit that, until that point, I hadn't paid much attention to what kind of person lays out bullshit [as I had been fascinated with bullshit (as a product) itself]. I had been blissfully unaware that we are capable of knowing that we are capable of knowing what kind of person is prone to dealing out bullshit. I was ignorant of the fact that we can identify a particular person is a bullshitter by mere observation of certain personality traits. I wondered if there was a methodology to figuring out what kind of person I was dealing with. More importantly, I discovered why such a search would be important. As social beings, we depend on others to be open and honest with us, and that, ultimately forms our philosophis outlook on life. Our interactions with others and how we see others, informs how we classify them -- as jerks, or smartasses, or even as good people. We, in turn, act, think, and speak according to how we perceive the personalities of others. If we, through experience, come to feel that the world is run by assholes, we will base our own interactions, thoughts and feelings accordingly. We may exhibit personality traits that make us what others may call "jerkish", or "crummy to others". One trait that I knew of with any certainty, was the connection between those who I and others had called assholes and a capacity for bullshitting. I was content that I had, indeed figured out the formula for finding out whether someone I knew was an asshole, and in my eagerness to label virtually everyone I knew an asshole, I realized my zeal had led me to an error: some of those who I had squarely tissed into the asshole camp were clearly not so. There were individuals who were different from the garden-variety assholes that I had encountered in my philosophy classes. Other students (some other philosophy students) seemed to exhibit asshole tendencies, yet something was missing. There was a something that I couldn't quite put my finger on the they lacked. That moment I realized that there was a difference. Some people, upon further inspection, were not assholes. They were another breed entirely -- they were smartasses. Bullshit, although elemental to determining who an asshole or a smartass may or may not be, is not the sole factor for determining if one is so. I will attempt to map out necessary and sufficient conditions for spotting an asshole or a smartass ( as I am not fully committed to the idea that one may be both). I acknowledge that my conditions in themselves may be inadequate, or not correct at all. The heart of this inquiry is to suggest that 1)there is a connection between a habit of bullshitting and the personalities of those who spread it with regularity, and 2) that it may be useful to us to know what the connection is. I feel that, as long as we stop to ponder bullshit, it may be apropos to know exactly from who all this bullshit is coming from. At this point, I realize that the impression may be that my inquiry is not one of serious academic merit, to which, to some extent, I heartily agree. However, in all seriousness, the genesis of my inquiry is only partially in jest. I insist that neither my inquiry, nor this posting is intened to disguise my using the word "asshole" repeatedly as serious philosophic discussion. And, although I realize the outward appearance of the unphilosophicness of the subject matter, I feel that a philosophic approach to this decidedly unphilosophic topic is not only warranted, but in some way overdue. Now that I have established the tenure of my approach to the subject, I must say here that my approach is merely one of inquiry. I posit no heavy philosophic examination of the subject, nor am I insisting that my approach is the right way to go about looking at the topic. Since I am still developing my "theory", I will forgo technical labels such as "necessary" or "sufficient", and will simply write out my thoughts as I initially thought them while sitting in my philosophy of language class. Firstly, I wondered if the nature of my query was ontological, episemological, or ethical. I quickly eliminated any ethical sonsideration of the subject on the grounds that no theory (perhaps with the exception of Kantian ethics) directly addressed by any moral theory. It is perfectly reasonable that a utlitarian can be an asshole (or a smartass) while simultaneously performing morally acceptable deeds. An egoist indeed might benefit more if the egoist were an asshole. Having thrown out ethical considerations, I moved on to an ontological or epistemological view on the subject. I figure that the subject can be approached either way, as figuring out whether a person is an asshole or a smartass includes questions involving the nature of one's personality ( a metaphysical question), and what evidence we need to conclude that an individual is one or the other (epistomological). Which approach works best, however, I will leave to anyone who considers the subject. I feel that, in order to know, we must approach it from both directions. As I said at the outset, my quest was motivated by my fascination with bullshit. I had discovered that both bullshitters and smartasses possessed a capacity for bullshiting. And, true to Frankfurt's description, assholes and smartasses seemed indifferent to the truth. Bullshitters, Frankfurt explains, are indifferent to the truth. This quality is the "essence of bullshit" (p. 34). Although both are indifferent to the truth, I feel that the motivation for this indifference differs between the asshole and the smartass. Frankfurt writes that the bullshitter carefully crafts his bullshit for the purposes of getting what he wants. He's "trying to get away with something" (p.23). This aspect of bullshitting is also true of assholes. The asshole is always motivated by his need to get over on other people. Often, the victim of an asshole's one over describes the experience as feeling like he has been shit on. But unlike Frankfurt's bullshitter, the asshole cares not at all for what the listener of his bullshit feels. He's not out to get you to feel anything. He is solely motivated to get what he wants. If you feel any emotional response for his bullshit, well, then good for you. You are all the more a sucker for his BS. Since the asshole has no intention of ever returning any favor, he has to maintain his chicanery as long as he is getting what he wants. His loyalty does not last long. It is worth noting here, that, unlike the bullshitter, whose worst fear is discovery (the fear that we will discover the he has been bullshitting us the whole time), the asshole has no such underlying fear. He is not only indifferent to his own bullshit, he is also indifferent to getting caught in the cat of bullshitting. This is the case because the asshole simply does not care about you. Although the asshole does not care about you, you (meaning other people) is essential for the asshole to be an asshole ( if I were to label a "necessary condition", other people is a necessary condition for an asshole). The asshole, although he does not care how you feel, definitely wants a response out of you. This motivation, at its face, may seem contradictory. But for the asshole, the sentiment is not so much a contradiction, but a manifestation of the duplicitious nature of the asshole's personality. In addition to not caring to your emotions, the asshole may appear to not care for his own actions. He may say that he does not care what he has to say of do to get what he wants. But, rest assured his motivation necessarily depends, if not on your emotional reactions, but on what your non-emotional reactions may be. That is, was the asshole successful in getting you to do what he wanted you to do? Like the asshole, the smartass is also motivated by a need to bullshit. His motivation, however, is not dependent on others. The smartass ignores other people. The smartass is not motivated by a need to get over on anyone. There is no such inner motive. The smartass says what he says because his words are pleasing to him, usually in an attempt at being humorous (this explains how a person can be a smartass absent of others. An asshole cannot. Think about it: can a person really be an asshole to himself?). The fact that anyone or no one reacts to what the smartass says is of no consequence to him or his goals. The fact that the smartass speaks at all is his goal. Indiffernece to truth, despite its importance, takes a backseat to the act of speaking itself. The bullshit that the smartass dispenses isn't said for the sake of getting what he wants; it's said because the smartass fancies himself a clever and funny person. Usually he is not -- which is why he is often mistaken for an asshole.The smartass is, at his heart, self-centered. His aim is self amusement. He does not care if his "humor" is humorous to anyone but himself. Unlike the asshole, whose assholeness necessarily depends on the actions of others, the smartass truly does not care if anyone else cares or even hears his remarks. Because of this fact, the smartass is limited to words. The real thrust of his ability is his verbal capacity for witty and often crude comments. The asshole, on the other hand, faces no such limitations. His assholliness in not limited to language, but also includes his actions as well. As this is still a work in progress, I have not exactly thought out where to go from here. Perhaps some more thought will help to clear up whether I should continue on this topic at all. Oh well.

Epistemology with Oprah!

Lately, I've been paying alot more attention to what I'm saying. I guess it has to do with that brush with Frege not so long ago, when I was started on the business of worrying about to what I was really referring when I looked to to the moonlit sky and proclaimed that I was staring up at Hesperus. My, I would say, Hesperus is certainly bright tonight. By the way, it's easier to say it's Venus. Anyway, when you pay attention to what you're saying, you're also, consequently, paying attention to what you are thinking, and often asking to yourself not only the meaning of what you say, but also whether you're saying anything that you know for sure. I could have all my references correct, but is what I'm saying really known to me as fact? What? Ok, let me backtrack and try to make what I'm saying less jumbled. What I mean is that sometimes I'm so caught up in the meanings of what I say, that I've lost track of whether what I'm saying is correct at all. There. That said it. Maybe I should get straight on whether I am saying anything that I know before I try to assess whether what I'm saying means. With me so far? As all of my friends and family knows, I watch a tremendous lot of television. I think that the technical term for my TV watching is called "get a life", but needless to say, I do. Watch. Alot. I think that among philosophy types, it's the rather "in" thing to proclaim to you're colleagues that you either don't own a TV set, or that you don't have cable. (I only read Truthout and listen to Pacifica, they might say).That way, by saying so, you distinguish your eudaimonic lifestyle from that endless and decidedly unphilosophic television watching of all of the other swine. But, seeing that I disdain philosophic types and all that they stand for, especially those who shop at Trader Joe's and profess veganess, I freely cop to the fact that I do indeed watch TV. Alot. I think that the reason why so many philosophy types deny that they watch TV is because of the "low" culture of popular society, and the reputation associated with those who either use or participate in it. Popular culture is the sophist to the Socratic individual. If it is anything, popular culture is kryptonite to the philosopher. His philosophical powers are weakened by exposure to all things pop -- eventually resulting in complete philosophic collapse. Popular culture, especially TV, makes idiots of us all. (Or at the very least, it churns out a few empiricists). But I say, on this one, the philosophy type is wrong, for the modern age's greatest philosophical sage is on the air for all to see: Ms. Oprah Winfrey. This is no joke. I'm really quite serious. I know that there is almost a cottage industry of professional Oprah-bashing out there. I've participated in a great deal of it myself. But once I actually started watching Oprah instead of listening to what other people told me about the "Oprahdization" of society, I found that there are plenty of lessons in store for even the most Aristotelian-minded philosopher. I was browsing some time ago on Oprah's website, where there is listed 20 things that Oprah knows for sure. Now, as a philosophy type person, any suggestion made by someone that they know anything with certainty is bound to grab my ear. So I took a look at Oprah's list. At fist glance, the list can be easily dismissed as pop-psyche, motivational speaker babble. And in reality it is. But, there's something else at work behind the simple and obvious claims, like, "what you do comes back all the time, no matter what" (by the way, Oprah says that that statement is her creed). I thought when I read Oprah's creed, well duh, every culture on earth has some sort of idea of karma. I, for instance, ws raised with the "Golden Rule". Wiccans, I think, believ in a 3-fold law, and so on. But, how do I know that? How is it that Oprah's bit of advice failed to tell me anything that I didn't already know? Suddenly, Oprah's list of 20 became an exercize in seeking the epistemic nature of "duh". How is it that Oprah can claim that she knows anything for sure? And how is it that, without having seen Oprah's list before, I know these 20 things, too? John Dewey, the American pragmatist, said that the knowledge that we gain through our experiences must be of practical value. For the pragmatist, all that info is fine and dandy, but real knowledge tells us one simple thing: I can use it to so something. If it works, then it's good to know. If it does not, then the info is useless. Knowledge, for Dewey, enabled man to master our environment. For Dewey, the test for what counted as knowledge was a test of coherence. Does what I accept as true fit with what else I believe is true? If it fits, then it is true. Oprah's creed certainly has practical value. If we realize that we may be subject to human or divine retribution, our actions or sentiments (because Oprah believes that beliefs have force as well) are more likely to be kind instead of malevolent. Given similar religious or moral beliefs (and experiences)about how our behaviour can "come back" at us, Oprah's creed seems to pass the test of coherence. But, as Dewey admits, coherence is a shaky criteria for knoweledge at best. Because all people are different, all people do not share the same set of held "truths". We all have different beliefs to which a piece of data does or does not cohere. Anything approaching universal knowledge would have to be decided by committee, or at least hopelessly relativistic. But, Oprah tells us that her creed is a truth "no matter what". It is universal and not subject to relativity. So, I looked another epistomological method to test the truth of Oprah's claim. I remembered that, some time ago, in my epistemology class, we discussed reliabilism. Now, if I remember correctly, reliabilism has something to do with accepting a belief as true only if it has been formed in a reliable manner or by way of a reliable process. I can't quite remember the example that we handled in class, but I remember thinking that reliabilism tends to yield alot of beliefs that are, for lack of a better word, "duh" beliefs (like Oprah's creed). That is, if my eyes never failed me before, that is, I can rely on the accuracy of what they are seeing, and I think that I see a steamroller coming towards me, I can reliably believe that there is, in fact, a steamroller coming towards me. Or something like that. So now I thought, is that the hidden epistemic factor at work with Ms. Winfrey? But, then I thought, it can't be -- Oprah says that she knows these things for sure . Even reliable methods fail from time to time. So then I thought, if Oprah knows these things for sure, what she knows for sure cannot be derived from any outside means. We know that if we hinge our knowledge on what we discover from the world around us, we may come across false information or worse yet, arrive at a false belief. So, Oprah's stipulation that she knows these 20 things for sure suggests that her basis for knowledge cannot be empirical. So then I thought, if not empirical, then we (or at least she) knows these things for sure without experience. And that led me to the rationalists: When Descartes wrote the Meditations, he asked of what things he can know for certain. Descartes stated that any knowledge he derived from his sense must be discarded until he could be certain that that knowledge was not subject to doubt. Ultimately, he arrived at the truth of his own exixtence. That knowledge, Descartes claimed, was known a priori -- without experience. Even if he doubted that he existed, something, Descartes reasoned, must be thinking that it does not exist -- so he exists. That fact at least cannot be doubted. But, Oprah makes an even bigger claim. She's not just stating that she exists, she's claiming a list of 20 truths that she knows with certainty . Now, I know that Oprah does not rule out the existence of a creator-being that put the world and events in motion. So, I guess that we could say that what is revealed to her as the truth concerning her 20 claims is the product of the Divine Light of Reason. I guess we could say that Oprah knows these things because God revealed them to her as true. This was Descartes' method of coming to the knowledge that the world outside of himself exists. Ok, that will do, but I think that there's something more at work, here. I feel that somehow, that explanation is not Oprahly satisfying. When I watch Oprah, I often hear her say that something is a gut feeling or known to us as some sort of intuitive notion of the way that things are or should be. So, that means, or at least suggests, that Oprah's 20 things are given to us (or her) intuitively. (hurray, GE Moore). (I'm not even going to attempt to explain intuititionism). But, here we find another snag. Oprah's creed, "what you put out comes back all the time, no matter what", seems to rely on some sort of empirical varification. How would we know that whatever we put out comes back unless we actually put out something that came back? Is Oprah telling us that her life lessons possess some sort of synthetic a priori quality? Kant suggests that there are some knowledge about the world that possess both a priori and empirical "qualities" (I use the word qualities, simply because I lack the proper vocabulary to express exactly what Kant means). In the case of mathematics, for instance, it is true that 5+7=12 a priori, but we need to see the operation of adding five to seven to varify, if you will that 5+7 does indeed equal twelve. I think that this may be putting us on the right track here. Indeed, what Oprah may be suggesting is that there is an intuitive a priori knowledge. The fact that there are things that we know for sure suggests that there are undoubtable truths that transcend our own experience. They are true "no matter what". But, there is also alongside that truth, the feeling that we know these things from our guts, that we simply "know" them, but they are not revealed it seems, until we actually begin to interact with others in the world. I'm not sure whether Oprah is correct that we can know one thing, let alone 20 things for sure. But, I also think that when we easily dismiss Oprah and other so-called mind numbing entertainment, or say that we cannot gain from watching them, we are wrong in saying so. It is arrogant, and I think, philosophically dangerous to believe that only those who are endowed with the proper philosophic credentials are credible sources for philosophic theory or discussion. If we want others to think philosophically, we should encourage them to see philosophic questions and answers in everything they see -- even on TV. As I wrap this up, I need only think to the slave that Socrates used to demonstrate that even the uneducated possess knowledge that they may not even know that they possess. That's worth thinking about or at the very least encouraged. And it's also worth thinking about the idea of intuitive a priori knowledge. I might make a name for myself at last!