Philosophy

During the 2020 summer semester, I took an introduction to philosophy course at UofT. I wrote two essays for the course, which I show below. I'm not a naturally good writer. I don't think the first essay is that good, but I think I improved quite a bit with the second essay.

Essay One

Response to Freedom and Necessity (1954) by A. J. Ayer.

In A. J. Ayer’s 1954 paper he presents an argument in favour of freedom and casual determinism being compatible. In this essay I’ll discuss the views he opposes and the arguments in which he presents in support of his view. I will then finish by showing how his argument breaks down.

I’ll now give mention of Ayer’s first main objection though it’s not in support of his argument on freedom and casual determinism being compatible. Ayer argues against the necessity of presuming determinism to be true. His main reasoning for this argument is that as of the present, relative to the 1950’s but still true today, we don’t have causal laws for all the phenomenon we observe, and that we only assume that with enough understanding eventually we will discover such laws. But that it’s entirely possible that we wont discover such laws, thus determinism still needs to be justified. I find this a correct argument, but it can be made stronger and perhaps more clear by using Plato’s allegory of the cave; where even if the universe seems to us as perfectly deterministic, the underlying makeup could be just random but just seems deterministic to us.

Ayer agrees with determinists that if you are forced to do an action, then you have been caused to do it; but does not accept that the argument is bidirectional, that is, if you are caused to do an action, then you are forced to do it. Another way to put this is Ayer argues that if the universe is deterministic you can still have freedom.

As a minor point, Ayer mentions “And if the circumstances are such that no reasonable person would be expected to choose the other alternative, then the action that I am made to do is not one for which I am held to be morally responsible.” I do not see this statement affecting Ayer's overall argument, however I do not think it should have been casually brought up as an obvious truth. We can imagine a soldier of an authoritarian nation is told that he must commit a war crime against a warring nation’s civilian population and if he disobeys then his own family will be killed. I would think that most reasonable people in such a situation would follow such orders, and yet I would also assume most reasonable people would hold that soldier morally responsible for his actions. I don’t accept that Ayer's statement here should have been made without any further argument as if it’s a settled matter. Though it is true that the statement isn’t needed for his argument, which perhaps is more reason for why it shouldn’t exist.

Ayer separates being caused to do an action into broadly two categories. One type of causation being free, and the other non-free. Ayer puts forward the example of a person with compulsive neurosis getting up and walking across a room whether he wants to or not as an example of non-free causation. The example of a normal person getting up and walking across a room only whether he wants to is used for free causation. In both examples he accepts the determinist argument that there is a cause and effect, but he disagrees that the existence of a cause must imply the person walking is non-free.

Ayer puts forward three conditions needed to perform an action in a free way: (1) I could have acted otherwise if I had chosen; (2) I acted voluntarily; (3) Nobody compelled me to do the action. The first two conditions at first glance seem reasonable, but I have to question why the third has to be because of a person doing the compelling. Why can’t nature itself compel me as well? Why am I not free if a man points a gun at my head and tells me to hand over all my money, but I’m free if I’m driving my car when a flash flood happens and I’m compelled to abandon my car and swim to safety? It seems like an arbitrary definition just to slightly improve his argument.

When you look closer at the first condition I think it breaks down. It seems to me that the ability to have acted otherwise is exactly what Ayer's paper is supposed to try and prove. The whole division between whether free will exists or not is based upon if we can actually choose or not. The determinist argument is that our minds still must follow the law of cause and effect, so thus we can’t actually choose our choices. Our choices are predetermined in the determinist theory. Ayer goes on to mention that determinism only requires our actions to be explained, but this is bypassing the determinist argument about how our choices themselves can be explained as well, not only the resulting action. To put it another way, Ayer is not giving enough focus on the why we choose. Just because we could have chosen another action, doesn't mean we are in control of that choice.

If I am right that Ayer’s first condition breaks down, then the rest of the argument breaks down in a critical manner as (2) and (3) aren’t sufficient to prove an action is free will. For, it doesn't matter if a person actually feels free or not in (2), just because a kleptomaniac feels not free and a normal person feels free doesn’t imply anything about their actual freedom; and you can have nobody compelling you to commit an action and yet still be not free.

Essay Two

Response to The Meaning of Life (1970) by Richard Taylor.

In this paper I will discuss Richard Taylor’s 1970 work, The Meaning of Life, where he argues that life does have meaning and it’s subjective.

I will preface my writing by first saying that my own thoughts do tend towards Taylor’s, in that I do agree the meaning of life is subjective. However, I don’t accept that he proved so, or did well enough to convince opponents. I also very much so enjoyed his style of writing and accepted the majority of his buildup arguments. I thought by the end that I would accept his overarching argument, but instead I found little connection between the arguments I agreed with and the end goal of showing life has meaning.

Now I’ll start by giving an overview of Taylor’s arguments in what I hope to be a generous manner. Taylor spends the majority of his writing by first explaining the idea of what an objectively meaningless life would be. He begins this by giving the example of the Greek myth of Sisyphus, a figure which had to endure rolling a stone continually up a hill for it to only roll back down for entirety. This example is to show what is an objectively meaningless life. Sisyphus’ actions do not have any impact on the world, and is meant as a punishment, something I would think close to all would see as meaningless. Taylor then imagines that Sisyphus’ mind was magically changed to then view his task as deeply rewarding, and says that now Sisyphus would have a meaningful life as his desires now match up with his actions, in essence he is now no longer forced to do an action which he hates but is instead forced to do an action he loves. I find this mind frame based argument incorrect, which I’ll get into after.

Next, Taylor enters into reality by giving the example of worms living on the the walls of a cave, there only purpose being to lie in wait for insects to come within range to be eaten, doing this in perpetuity until reaching old age in which they lay eggs and then promptly die, to be finally then cannibalized by other worms in waiting. Later on he gives a related example of migratory birds, whose only purpose in life is to migrate great distance to give birth and then return back to their home, all other moments of their life only exist to ensure this task is done. Both examples are again good examples of what seem to be meaningless lives, which as aside, Taylor will at the end try to show as actually meaningful lives.

With these examples, and other similar ones Taylor mentioned which I left out for brevity, he explores us to connect them to our own lives, and in fact all life. That just like Sisyphus or a migratory bird, we perform practically endless cycles with seemingly no end goal. That we can think of each of Sisyphus’ uphill rolls as one individual life, and when we die the ball rolls back down only for our children to then roll the rock back up. And that even if eventually this enduring toil results in the creation of a beautiful temple upon the hill, that like everything, eventually the temple will decay to dust without repetitive maintenance. Taylor here shows signs of his end argument, where he tries to show that the lack of an end is required for meaning.

Taylor again mentions the idea of what if Sisyphus’ mind frame was changed so that instead his endless task was no longer a prison sentence, but instead his entire desire. This would surely be a far better life from the point of view of Sisyphus, and in Taylor’s view also a subjectively more meaningful life. So even though Sisyphus’ life did not change, his thoughts on life changed which therefore gave meaning to his life.

Sisyphus is used again to explore a thought experiment on the idea of infinite boredom. What if Sisyphus was building a temple, and such a temple was eventually completed. Now what is he to do? Now is he to simply sit there and look at his temple? In this world Sisyphus’ life does have meaning, as it was to build a temple which has now been done, but the completion of which has resulted in a version of hell for Sisyphus in the manner of infinite boredom. Before we had an eternal hell of pointless existence, and now we have created an eternal hell in its absence.

Taylor uses these two versions of a hell to solidify his argument that the meaning of life doesn't require any sort of meaningful end goal to be eventually completed and in fact requires the lack of any such end state, but instead meaning comes from the intersection of will and the act of available seemingly repetitive tasks.

I find Taylor’s explanations of meaningless lives fairly convincing, though not totally so, which I think breaks down his conclusion. I will accept that a life of repetitive actions towards no end, disconnected from the will of one living such life is meaningless. However, I don’t necessarily agree that a life where the actions and will are working in tandem towards an end goal is meaningless due to eventual boredom. Why does it have to be that our meaning is to keep our will satisfied, or to modify our will to suit our environment? It may seem obvious at first glance that if one’s will isn’t satisfied then life will be agony, but I don’t think necessarily you can conclude that the meaning of life is to avoid that. If I had the option change my will so any action would become my deepest desire, would that have to then be a meaningful life as literally any action I performed would satisfy my will? Or with equal effect, would changing my will to be infinite boredom and do nothing be then meaningful?

Also another perhaps stronger point is the manner of which free will is involved. As of now the arguments against free will existing are strong enough to at least be forced to consider. If free will doesn't exist, then how can the meaning of life be “...to be living, in the manner that it is your nature to be living”? We have no choice but to live how we live if free will doesn't exist. We simply must live as is in our nature to be living, for there’s no other alternative. If I kidnap someone and force them to build me a castle, but use a magic potion to have them desire to do so, do they really live a meaningful life? If free will doesn't exist, this isn’t so different from us living our lives in the manner that is our nature to be living.