THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
PHIL 1600.2
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Simon Leys, “The Hall of Uselessness”
The power with which Chinese culture invests the “Written Word” (p. 11)
Leys translates Wen Guang as the “Light of Civilization” or “Light of the Written Word,” adding
that these come to “the same thing,” from which it follows that the emergence of civilization
coincides with the emergence of the written word (p. 12).
The significance of the allusion (i.e., the reference) of Wu Yong Tang (“The Hall of Uselessness”)
to The Book of Changes (p. 12)
Abraham Flexner, “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge”
Examples of useful inventions and scientific breakthroughs that are rooted in research
motivated not by thoughts of practical benefit, but by intellectual curiosity: (i.) Marconi’s debt
to Maxwell and Hertz (p. 545 L-R); Faraday’s research (p. 546 L); the case of Paul Erlich and the
significance of his remark, “Ich probiere” (p. 547 R-548 L); Banting’s discovery of insulin, and
Minot and Whipple’s use of liver extract to treat pernicious anemia (p. 549 L-R).
Flexner on “probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking,” the “ruling passion of
intellectual life in modern times” (p. 545 R)
“disinterested” inquiry (p. 546 R): to be disinterested is not the same as being uninterested.
Spiritual, or intellectual, freedom tends to encourage both originality and tolerance (p. 550 L)
“Learning as such is cultivated” (p. 551 L). In such a case, is learning regarded as an intrinsic or
an instrumental value?
Thomas Hurka, The Best Things in Life
Chapter 3
As a pluralist, Hurka argues that pleasure is not the only intrinsic value. There are many.
(Examples of Hurka’s commitment to pluralism come up again and again. Be aware of these.) In
this chapter, though, he wants to establish that, even within the realm of feeling, achieving
pleasure is not the most important goal.
The belief among Bentham and his fellow utilitarians that pleasure and pain can be weighed
equally against one another, that pleasure, in other words, is as great a good as pain is evil (p.
55).
Hurka disagrees: “Pleasure…is a lesser good than pain is an evil” (p. 55).
G.E. Moore and Karl Popper on the “asymmetry” between pleasure and pain (p. 56).
Examples (all of the following assume that the intensity of pleasure and pain is quantifiable):
(i.)
If we can choose between increasing one person’s pleasure a single unit from +9 to +10
and decreasing another’s pain a single unit from -10 to -9, we should choose the latter.
This is because “pain’s negative value is greater than…pleasure’s positive value” (p. 56).
(ii.)
If we can choose between decreasing one person’s pain two units from -3 to -1 and
decreasing another person’s pain a single unit from -10 to -9, we should choose the
latter. This is because “more intense pains are disproportionately more evil than less
intense ones” (p. 56).
(iii.)
If we can choose between increasing a person’s pleasure two units from +8 to +10 and
improving another person’s pleasure from +1 to +2, we should again choose the latter.
This is because even though, in the latter case, there is “a smaller absolute increase in
pleasure, it matters more” because the person in question “starts with less” (56).
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The political implications of the asymmetry between pleasure and pain (p. 58).
We already know, says Hurka, that our attitude toward pleasure and pain is time-biased, in the
sense that “we care more about pleasures in the present or near future than in the distant
future” (see p. 47). But our attitudes are also time-biased in the sense that, once pleasures and
pains are in the past, we care less about them. It’s worth asking whether Hurka is right about
this, since there are plenty of pleasurable and painful experiences that have a lasting effect on
us. Regardless, his point is that the importance to us of knowledge, achievement and virtue last
longer (pp. 59-50).
Immanuel Kant, E.F. Carritt, and T.H. Green on the negligible value of pleasure (pp. 60-61).
The biological explanation for our alleged time-biased attitude toward past pleasure and pains
(p. 62).
Psychological vs. ethical hedonism (p. 64; see also p. 11)
Two main arguments against the hedonist’s claim that pleasure is the only good:
➢ (i.) morally vicious pleasures: the example of the sadist (pp. 65-66); the example of
schadenfreude (p. 66); the issue of virtuous pains (p. 66); Socrates’s view (p. 67)
➢ (ii.) mindless pleasures: examples from Homer’s Odyssey and Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World (p. 68); Robert Nozick’s “experience machine” (pp. 68-70); Hurka on the
three ways in which the experience machine severs our connection to the world (p. 70);
The Matrix (pp. 70-71); John Stuart Mill on a pig (or a fool) satisfied versus a human
being (Socrates) dissatisfied (pp. 71-72).
The distinctiveness argument (p. 72; see also pp. 21-22)
Chapter 4
This chapter is dedicated to the value of knowledge. It opens with Hurka asking why we educate
our children. Notice that his answer cites reasons both instrumental and intrinsic (p. 75)
“What exactly is knowledge?” This question reflects the interest of an important sub-discipline
of Philosophy, known as epistemology. Hurka proceeds to define knowledge as requiring (a.)
believing something that is true, where (b.) that belief is justified by evidence. In other words,
your true belief is grounded on good reasons (p. 76). Knowledge, therefore, involves not only
knowing that something is true, but also why it’s true (p. 82, bot.; p. 83, top).
Hurka identifies three categories of knowledge: (i.) knowledge of the external world; (ii.)
knowledge of our relation to the world; (iii.) knowledge of our own internal states—i.e., our
thoughts, feelings, and traits of character (p. 77).
Although it is necessary to know particular facts, there is a greater value to general truths (p. 78,
top; pp. 79-80). In science, these general truths take the form of scientific laws, whereas in
Philosophy they take the form of metaphysical truths. General truths lend unity to the
substance or content furnished by particular facts (p. 83).
Metaphysics is a sub-discipline of Philosophy dealing with first principles, such as the nature of
being, substance, identity, cause, time and space.
A truth is general if (a.) its content is widely extended—i.e., it applies to many things; and (b.) it
has explanatory power—i.e., it can explain that wide array of things (pp. 78-79). Hurka later
adds that explanatory power consists not just in how many individual truths a general truth
explains, but in how many different kinds of truth it explains (p. 84).
What results is a hierarchy, “with items higher up in the hierarchy explaining ones lower down”
(p. 79).
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Not all knowledge is of equal value. Some is trivial (p. 76). Knowledge is trivial if it’s (a.)
localized—i.e., not extended—in its subject matter and (b.) fails to illuminate, or explain,
anything else (p. 81).
Understanding combines two intellectual styles, each of which Hurka associates with a city,
namely, Athens, the home of Western Philosophy, and Manchester, the home of the industrial
revolution. Athenian knowledge if of abstract principles, while Mancunian knowledge is of
particular facts—in other words, literally and figuratively, the nuts and bolts (p. 83).
The “full cognitive ideal”: well-justified true belief that’s precise and explains many other truths
of different kinds (p. 85). Notice that this combines Hurka’s definition of knowledge (p. 76) with
his definition of generality (pp. 78-79), complete with his addendum (p. 84, bot.).
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