Orthos Logos

Consider the following situation.

A young girl who is twelve years in age approaches us and indicates that she wants to have a baby. We would like to persuade her otherwise. We say to her, “Think of your baby. It will have a better life if you wait until you are more established, finished with your education, etc.” But then she responds as follows: “If I wait even a month, the egg that will give rise to the baby will be a different egg. Different egg, different person. If I wait, the baby I could have now will never exist. I can’t do that to her. Surely the baby will be better off living a life wherein certain economic difficulties are present, then were she to not exist at all. The right thing to do for my baby, since you’ve asked what I should do for her, is let her exist.”

How might one respond?

Consider the following quote for Willard Quine:

On that view, people and other things of the past and future are as real as those of today, where ‘are’ is taken tenselessly as in “two and two are four.” People who will be born are real people, tenselessly speaking, and their interests are to be respected now and always. People who, thanks to birth control, will not be born are a figment; there are no such people, not even tenselessly, and so nobody’s right to life has been infringed.

How might Quine’s remarks be relevant to the considerations of our young girl?

Many would take research that relies on evolution by natural selection to be good science. But is it falsifiable? Does the theory make predictions that might be shown false? Suppose we understand ‘adaptation’ and ‘selection’ such that “being adapted to an environment” means “surviving in an environment”. Thus the traits that allow an organism to survive are those that are selected; and those that are selected are those that allow an organism to survive. But surely this claim is tautalogous, so runs the argument, and not falsifiable.

Consider the following:

The classic core of logical positivism thus consisted in three basic premises namely: the analytic-synthetic distinction, the observational-theoretical distinction, and the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness…

What does the above statement mean and do you agree with the view there described?

Consider the following statement:

This the Aristotelians do not hold, for they say an action which is both virtuous and without pain is more desirable than the same action accompanied by pain. We Stoics think otherwise. (Cicero. De Finibus)

What is meant by this statement. Do you agree? Why or why not? Is it a product of a culture that is not ours? Or is it relevant in our contemporary context?

Consider the following situation: you are the conductor of an underground train. The dispatcher back at the station conveys the following information to you. There are five workers on the track directly ahead of you 100 yards. You can make a left at 75 yards, but there is one worker on the track there some 25 yards after the turn. Furthermore, there is a train approaching you from behind which the dispatcher is unable to communicate with. Furthermore, your breaks just went out and you won’t be able to stop the train within 500 yards. What should you do? Why?

I suppose I needn’t ask the following question, as I know from the answers provide in the Trolley Case what your answers will be. Suppose, instead, that you are a hospital administrator. You have five patients who need organ’s donated (five different organs). As it turns out, you have a patient who has been given a clean bill of health, and who may leave the hospital in a day or two. Since you thought it right to kill the one track-worker to save the the five, I take it that you will kill the patient, harvest his organs, and save the other five patients.

In “Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence,” Gary Lynch and Richard Granger defend an interesting etiology of intelligence. The account they target runs, roughly, as follows. Our early ancestors became less arboreal. And, as they migrated into the savanna, new dangers issued in new selective pressures, and, consequently, new adaptations. Being able to walk uprightly allowed one’s hands to be free to carry instruments. And competitive advantage belonged to those with the brainpower to fashion and use such tools. Thereby, intelligence was selected. Lynch and Granger, however, offer another account. They argue that if evolution had acted directly on the brain, we should expect the relative parts of our brains to be qualitatively different from those of our less intelligent relatives. However, the main difference is not found in terms of the qualitative; it is found in terms of the quantitative. The counter-etiology that they offer runs something like this. The evolutionary changes that allowed us to walk erectly lengthened our lower trunk. This made more room for the uterus to extend during pregnancy. The result was bigger babies with bigger brains. The resultant intelligence is exaptative rather than adaptative.