Scrambled egg and alienation

I've noticed if you let a child help with the cooking they are more likely to eat their dinner.

Marx would be pleased as this confirms his theory of alienation.

EGG

It would be quicker, less effort and certainly less messy to scramble eggs myself.

This is in line with Model T Ford manufacture that taught us that division of labour increases output. Division of labour (you turn the screw, another sprays the paint) gets more stuff done.

What Marx saw however was that this process is dehumanising for workers. They are alienated which basically means they are bored. Profit is maximised but we are all a bit more miserable.

The tale of the egg showed me that the slower and messier process leads to a happy worker who ate his tea. He was part of the whole process not just a cog in the wheel.

Everyone wins for a bit more effort and collaboration. Fewer dinners were made but so what?

BUT

I had to wash up on my own.

Giving blood and Darwin

I gave blood this week and feel very smug about it on two counts. What follows is an exploration of where those feeling fit in our biological makeup.

I was pleased that I was allowed for starters. It's incredible anyone manages to donate, the criteria are so strict. Too small, been on holiday somewhere nice, recently ill, gay, dodgy NHS admin. The list excludes most.

My iron levels were fine and that's with me being a weak vegetarian! I didn't faint or throw up!

I felt very manly.

I'm tempting fate of course, next time I'll probably be flopped on the floor like a Galapogan seal.

I also feel morally righteous without caveat. This is a very rare feeling and. I intend to enjoy it. Especially as it has taken me years to get round to bothering.

Finches and the Beagle

What's going on here in terms of the history of human thought?

The first response (the manly one) is Darwin's survival of the fittest simplified. We are conditioned to want to physically exceed the other animals.

This interpretation led to the social Darwinism of letting the poor go to the wall and the attempted eradication of whole races.

Seeing if that's a bit of a palaver we had better find another way to explain it all.

Altruism is dominant

The morally righteous justification feeds into a more sophisticated interpretation of Darwinism. That being that we are programmed to assist the whole pack in surviving not just individual.

Cooperation helps my family of monkeys or monkeys in general to prosper. Meerkats, as everyone knows, babysit other Meerkats.

Our altruism is our driving force.

This is much nicer isn't it?

I've had cold fingers and toes since though, might go and have a lie down.

Have I just had Plato's perfect day? Leaves and lunch.

Having learnt some leaf types from the wonderful Memrise website, I managed to get a bracing run in and enjoyed a nice lunch.

Unremarkable. Though adding parsley to the lentil and carrot soup was a masterstroke.

For Plato though this is as good as it gets. For all I know he had no interest in leaves or jogging but what he did like was dividing things into threes.

You had to cater for your mind, body and soul. So learning things, exercise and enjoying yourself would tick his Hellenic beardy boxes.

It's 'all work and no play' really but I like the balance in it, I like the justification for pleasure.

Also applied to the state

He also extrapolated this idea to society as a whole. It needed three types of people. Philosopher (mind), soldiers (body) and those who produce things (ok it falls down here but it's still three things).

So take heart! When you are pulling on a nice pint with the paper in a comfy chair, Plato would approve. As long as you've schlepped up a hill first and written your blog having read up on the subject first.

Your author may be excused the last bit!

A flaw in Mill's happiness principle based on observations of the office heating arrangements

You read on after that headline? Well done.

I'm too warm in the office, others feel the cold and turn the heating up. 'Put a jumper on, have a cup of tea' I implore Marilyn, never to any avail. I'd rather be outside in cold weather, others hunker down and some people, would you believe it, don't like 70s progressive rock music!

The point being what we dig is subjective personal thing. What grates on me (playing music after a goal) others derive felicity from. Each to their own.

To stop harm, not for your own good

J.S Mill saw this an concluded if we want people to be happy there's no point in imposing your view of what's best for them. He was talking about government paternalism and moral coercion of the majority. He didn't believe you should have to have a beard, get married to be allowed in a B&B, always wear a poppy, not shop on a Sunday or not go to school if you are a girl for your own good. The only reason others can compel you is if you harm others, never for your own good.

Take drugs and gamble yourself to death. Who am I to say that doesn't make you happy anymore than they are to tell me I shouldn't go for a run in the rain (which people do). I can't know what makes you content.

Now the flaw!

It's a big deal for me to find flaws in Mill. I fundamentally believe the world would be better if personal choices were accepted more readily rather than us all telling each other what to do all the time. He argues that dissent sharpens the arguments and catalyses truth, so here we go.

There's a glaring problem though with the idea that happiness can't be imposed. The flaw being that you get used to things. The temperature, the tune you are humming or the food you like. To a massive extent they are influenced by what you are exposed to.

Aquire the taste

Me and the current Mrs Socks have exposed each other to football and baroque choral music to the point of mutual appreciation. You can acquire the taste for beer.

I bet you never used to like tomatoes?

So maybe there are things we can derive pleasure from if just forced to experience them. If that is the case then why shouldn't a wise government or moral society impose on us long country walks, yoga and reading the works of J.R.R Tolkein?

You don't like it because you haven't tried it?

Folk music is the only credible argument against capitalism

I like folk music for lots of reasons. I added another reason this week when I realised folk music is the only working example of an alternative to capitalism.

It's appealing to have some politics behind music.

This perhaps needs a little explanation.

Inequality in capitalism arises because of private property

If you can own property you can own more than someone else. If you own it you control one of the means of production (labour and capital being the others) so you are ahead in the stakes of the have and have nots.

This inequality and its associated poverty led Marx to his ideas of common ownership. This ideology led to the state controlled states that crumbled in 1989.

And that was that. A sea of Trabants voted with their wheels, headed west to through the Brandenburg gate and the world settled for the one system which lets us all own our own iPads and access a variety of maize based snacks. The end of history. Which suits most people it seems.

Some grumbled but the alternatives reminded them too much of their parent's excruciating commune stories. Apart from folk music.

Lau not Lenin

Folk isn't owned. It doesn't have intellectual copyright. Fairport Convention are more likely to sing She Moved Through The Fair because it's free. Everyone brings something new to traditional tunes, the songs live on and people with tankards clipped to belts love it.

It works better because no-one owns it.

This is an enormous insight. You crisp collection (crisp collection?) enjoys market competition driving deeper ridges and lobster flavours in search of your coin. Most things do. The innovation in folk however comes directly from the opportunity to use music that isn't private (nor come to that, state owned) property.

Not much else can boast that. But don't tell Radio 2 or they'll witch hunt Mike Harding.

So have real ale and sandals triumphed where vodka and snow boots failed?

Rawlsian choices while playing cricket

I don't play cricket often and I really look forward to a chance to play. So why did I retire my wicket when batting this week?

I was batting well, was not out, seeing the ball well, lively on my toes.

I did it to let team mates lower down the order have a bat. It was a short game and the overs were ticking past.

Veil of ignorance

The ethics behind the choice are Rawlsian.

Rawls said we should make moral choices as if we didn't know what place in the world we would be born into. We should view it through a veil of ignorance. This alters (mainly political) decisions you make on how things should be run.

So if I might have been born into an ethnic minority then racism is a bad choice. I might have been born poor so free state education would be a good choice. I might have been born with business flair so a state run economy wouldn't appeal. You get the picture.

I might have been born batting at 11 (I usually am to be fair). So getting retiring and giving the latter batsmen a go is a sensible Rawslian choice. 

I'm not superman

Usually in sport Nietzsche and Geoffrey Boycott win. The superman would score a century and the team would win. Climb a mountain and plant your country's flag on top. We all benefit from the one whose really good at things and allowed to excel.

This usually works in sport as the competitiveness is what makes it fun. Lose and it's more fun to try and win next time. The batsmen below me actually had a moan and said I should have batted on so we had more chance of winning the game!

Trumpet blowing disclaimer

My bowling and fielding were awful, I went for 18 off one over.

Faced with cold water, you have to jump in

Faced with cold water, you just have to jump in.

Minus 4 degrees on your day off, you must go out for a run.

Right?

I sort of have to*. It’s a dangerous mindset but I think I’ve worked out why it is.

Even if it is unpleasant

There is more to it, I think, than the endorphins of exercise, than the heightened sense appreciation of nature, than the snug feeling of being warm and dry afterwards.

I think it is the romantics who are to blame. 

The romantic movement wasn’t about being pious or even being pleasant. The music broke convention as did the lifestyles of the poets.

The point was to try things even if they were unpleasant. Have the full range of experiences, don’t just play safe.

Life wasn’t about being good or happy it was about experiencing as much as possible. Love and lose, write the pop song.

Silas Tomkin Cumberbatch?

My Christmas Eve dip in a Scottish loch is tipping a hat to Bryon swimming the Hellespont and joining in obscure Greek wars. It is Coleridge joining in the French Revolution under the name Silas Tomkin Cumberbatch.

* Sort of

20's not plenty according to Kant

Applying a ethical theory to see if I support a road safety campaign

Round my way there's a campaign to get people to drive at 20 miles per hour in residential streets.

I want people to drive more slowly. It's no fun being run over. Although when I got 4x4d the mental scares of being called a 'middle aged man' in the local paper were worse than the physical injuries.

The campaign takes the form of mock speed signs - 20 in a circle. It is the nature of these signs, rather than the slow down campaign in general, that I 'asked' Immanuel Kant about and he's not so sure they are moral.

Categorical imperative - what if everyone did that?

Kant's test of good was that you must apply universally the general rule of your action. Would it be good if everyone acted like you? It's the moral justification parents reach for when telling children not to drop litter.

I think in this case there is a danger of confusing drivers with mock road signs. They are designed to look like normal speed signs. If every street produced their own different instructions, drivers would be speeding up, slowing down, turning left, not turning left at the whim of each resident, potentially.

This might be more dangerous.

* Note added later: Have I got this wrong? Kant's type of ethics isn't based on the consequences, it is based on reasoning in a vacuum. Someone clever help me out here? 

How The Times came to its gay marriage conclusion

The Times (UK) newspaper just came out in favour of gay marriage in a 5 March 2012 editorial.

I find this interesting not because of what view they took but because of how they came to their conclusion.

The Times said it would increase the sum of human happiness. They are therefore arguing from a uutilitarian moral view point.

Normally current affairs debate is characterised by intuitive, this feels right or wrong positioning. It is rare to find an underlying moral philosophy in Parliament or media.

Here's was one though.

Counting felicity

Utilitarianism says the morally right thing to do is that which increases the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Morality isn't the rules of a god (Archbishops opposed gay marriage), abstract Greek ideas of maximising your potential or any notion of absolute individual rights .

If it lessens pain and increases happiness it must be good.

Now utilitarianism has flaws such as the problem of how to measure all this (felicit calculus) and that of sacrificing the individual on the alter of society. It's a useful rule of thumb to consider stuff in the news though.

Mostly I'm pleased as it is so rare to see reasoning based on coherent moral philosophy, be it Bentham's or otherwise.

Does Aristotle think I'm a good dad?

You just have to be very good at what you are good and you'll get his nod of approval

Some dad attributes and activities I excell at. I can carry him up hills, we're good at getting muddy, I'm always up for a kick about and a giggly wrestle. He will get taken to a lot of sport.

But can I dress him in an outfit that matches? Am I able to feign interest in the minutiae of nursery policy? Do I get bored of reading to him after the sixth book? You get the picture.

As long as I'm really good at the things I'm good at then I won't beat myself up and I'd like to think Aristotle wouldn't either.

A very good hedgehog

Aristotle asked what it was to be a good human and concluded that it was to excel at that which we are uniquely suited too. So a good eagle is one that can fly high, a good cheetah is a quick cheetah. Being a spikey ball scores big in the hedgehog community, roaring loudly less so.

This is ergon (it doesn't refer to parenthood but I'm spreading the jelly here a little).

A human's unique quality is reason. To live a good live we should reason as well as possible. We've been given reason so we should sweat our asset. Solve the problems of the mind, muse on logical, metaphysical things.

This is a handy view for a philosopher, so in this vein I've adapted the idea of ergon slightly to conclude that I'm great because I like a puddle. 

About this blog

They've already worked it out, you don't need to

I'm finding conversations, ethical dilemmas, situations I find myself in are relating to big ideas and events of history.

Aristotle has already decided my choice of sandwich.

So I'm doing myself a favour and letting philosophers take the strain so I don't have to work things out from scratch all over again.

I'll try not to make things up to fit an idea or shoehorn them in. That contrivance is dull and it'll show. I'll write only if I actually did find something Machiavelli said useful in dealing with the postman.

Send more socks

Archaeologists recently found the earliest piece of writing in Britain. It was a letter home from Roman soldier based on Hadrian's wall.

It said 'send more socks'.

Ockham and the ex

A C13th monk from Woking helped me the other day, with a tale of an ex-boyfriend and some dodgy jewellery.

A friend was having a nice old moan about her ex. A person in a shop had suggested her necklace, a present from him, was a fake.

Now people like a conspiracy. He would have known it was fake, she told me, this was typical of him.

It's very hard to argue against a conspiracy. Lot's of things might be possible. I might be writing this using only my ears, it's hard to disprove possibilities. The convoluted conspiracy also tends to be a bit more fun.

This can be frustrating in conversation for seekers of truth and calm reason like you and I. So I told her that while it might be true is was fake and it might even be true that he knew, that the truth is most likely the simplest explanation.

Probably, it was real and he wasn't a dodgy.

This is William of Ockham's razor. A system of logic that says the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. It's useful.

Just nod and agree

I probably didn't fulfil my role as a sounding board to have a good old moan at. People just want you to nod and agree, especially when having an ex rant. They don't want medieval logic.

At least I didn't say 'Plurality must not be posited without necessity' as Ockham would have done. He was actually challenging the over elaborate theology of the time but the modern evolution of his idea is that the least convoluted explanation is most likely to be correct.

Want to know the outcome? The necklace was verified as genuine by a jeweller.