Insight Spring 2018 by lvilleinsight

Insight Spring 2018

Insight

Religion & Philosophy

Masthead

Editorial Board Danny Irvine ’19 Anton Kandalin ’19 Kate Liu ’19 Alex Small ’18

Faculty Advisor Dr. Jason VonWachenfeldt

Foreword in·sight /ˈinˌsīt/ Oxford English Dictionary 1. Internal sight, mental vision or perception, discernment; in early use sometimes, Understanding, intelligence, wisdom. 2. The fact of penetrating with the eyes of the understanding into the inner character or hidden nature of things; a glimpse or view beneath the surface; the faculty or power of thus seeing.

Mission Statement The student-run journal Insight, founded by the Department of Religion & Philosophy in 2015, aims to enhance the spiritual and intellectual experience at Lawrenceville by: Cultivating a deeper appreciation and interest among students for religious life, Exposing the student body to a comprehensive range of philosophical and religious work, Offering an open forum for the exchange and consideration of diverse beliefs, Showcasing the foremost written work of the Department’s students. Contribution to Insight is open to the entire community, including students, alumni, and faculty.

Letter From the Editors The first Insight board recognized the difficulties of creating a brand new publication and hoped to create a unique outlet that allowed students the opportunity to engage with religion and philosophy in a way that no other publication on campus provides. As the second board of Insight, we aim to revive these goals. Through our efforts, Dr. Von has always been an encouraging mentor. His belief in us as well as the publication has been the driving force behind our success. Although the publication took a brief pause, we have worked to revive the spirit as we recognize the importance of students expressing their ideas through the lens of religion and philosophy. Religious studies have offered the student body countless opportunities to learn about the various faiths and beliefs that shape our society today. Throughout this section, students have researched and considered the facets of and similarities between certain religious faiths. From comparisons between Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism to interpretations of the Dalai Lama’s symbolization in the political climate of the twenty-first century, these papers explore the underlying meaning of different religions. Furthermore, this section consists of an original parable as well as an examination of Jesus’ resurrection scene in terms of the distinctive agendas of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. The Philosophy papers collected within this journal represent original thoughts and arguments ranging from ethics to epistemology. As students begin their philosophical explorations, these papers demonstrate their abilities to present a logical, reasoned argument concerning the societal implications of various different institutions, technology, and economic approaches. From topics including Planned Parenthood, self-driving cars, astronauts in deep space, and a freeloader dilemma, the ethics papers within this section dive into analyzing the current issues through a range of different ethical systems. Additionally, this section contains an in-depth analysis of Affirmative Action for Applied Ethics, as well as an inquiry into the merits and applications of Marx’s historical materialism. A special edition to this Issue of Insight is the the Darwin Collection: a series of papers discussing the relationships between science’s impacts on the religion and philosophy through a social context. The introductory paper writ6

ten by Science Master Johnny Clore H’02 provides an in-depth analysis of religion’s influences on the life and work of Charles Darwin that crystallizes the points made in subsequent student-written pieces. The works in this section come from Dr. Von’s Makers of the Modern Mind class, in which students analyze certain thinkers and their respective influences on modernism and our societal mindsets today. Especially with regard to Darwin, the student papers in this section draw from On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man and apply such scientific discoveries to current phenomena. These original research papers approach relevant topics such as Artificial Intelligence, educational systems, and morality through the philosophical and scientific lenses posed by Darwin. We would like to thank Dr. Von for all his help with the publication. His unwavering support and thoughtful guidance helped us overcome difficult obstacles over the course of the year. He has been instrumental in making this publication a successful one. We would also like to thank Mr. Clore for his willingness to support the publication and to produce a thoughtful piece that highlights the interdisciplinary nature of not only the religion and philosophy department but also the science department. We would like to thank the entire religion & philosophy department for educating us on the importance of these schools of thought. Their work has fostered engagement within the Lawrenceville community. Reminder: if you have a thoughtful piece of work, whether it be written within the religion/philosophy department or not, please reach out to one of us at dirvine19@lawrenceville.org, kliu19@lawrenceville.org, or akandalin19@ lawrenceville.org. All are welcome, we want this to be the outlet to grapple with difficult topics and express your findings to the community for further consideration. Insight is open for everyone interested in ideas. Sincerely, The 2nd Insight Editorial Board Danny Irvine ’19 Anton Kandalin ’19 Kate Liu ’19 Alex Small ’18 7

Table of Contents Student Work:

Religion Serena Chen ’19… Dalai Lama’s Next Reincarnation Questioned

Emilia Onuonga ’19… Thus I Have Heard: Parable of the Fruit

Anika Bagaria ’20… The Sacred Feminine’s Presence in Hinduism and Islam

Cate Levy ’20… Islam in Buddhism - A Connection to Achieve the Ultimate Goal

Kevin Xiao ’19… Shaping Jesus’ Resurrection

Philosophy Ivy Zhang ’19… What is the “Good”?: Objectivism vs. Virtue Ethics in the Context of the Freeloader Dilemma

Erin McNulty ’19… Should We Send Astronauts into Deep Space?

Kevin Shao ’19… At the Mercy of Robots

Skye Urbach ’19… More Than Abortions: Why Planned Parenthood Needs Funding

Alan Lin ’18… Race as Merit in Affirmative Action Admissions

Justin Wong ’18… Communist Contradictions

Darwin Collection Faculty Contribution: Science Master Jonny Clore H’02 … On the Origin of On the Origin of Species

Student Work: Alan Lin ’18… Homo syntheticus? Charles Darwin, Artificial Intelligence, and Humanity

Ben Cunningham ’18… Morals Like Species: Morality in the Wake of Darwin

Arin Chinnasathian ’18… The Crucial Pitfall of Social Darwinism: The Case for Diversity in Education

Kate Liu ’19… Minding Morality: Realizing Morality’s Subjective Nature

All photographs in the publication were taken during the Lawrenceville School’s Harkness Travel Programs in Spring 2018

Dalai Lama’s Next Reincarnation Questioned Serena Chen ’19 The Dalai Lama symbolizes peace for millions of individuals throughout the world. Although he officially leads the Tibetan Buddhists, his influence extends far beyond the boundaries of Tibet. Thus, it may be hard to believe that once the current Dalai Lama passes away, a new leader may not take his place. In accordance with tradition, the Dalai Lama chooses to reincarnate to serve people, despite having attained spiritual peace (nirvana), and escaped the cycle of suffering in rebirth. The new leader is recognized at a young age to be the reincarnation of the preceding Dalai Lama. Today’s Dalai Lama remains in exile due to decades of tensions between the Chinese government and Tibet concerning religious freedom. Even to this day, human rights issues fueled by religious tensions run rampant in Tibet. Buddhist monks assess various signals to identify Dalai Lama candidates among a pool of children born around the time the previous incarnation of the Dalai Lama passed away. According to the current Dalai Lama, “reincarnation is a phenomenon which should take place either through the voluntary choice of the concerned person or at least on the strength of his or her karma, merit and prayers” (Dalai Lama). The requirements indicate the absence of a gender requirement in a Dalai Lama. The current leader has suggested that although there have been no female reincarnations of Dalai Lama yet, it is a possibility. The underlying threat to choosing the Dalai Lama’s next reincarnation is the political power that China has exerted over this ritual. The Chinese government firmly declared that they would choose the next Dalai Lama, and in 1955, the boy that the current Dalai Lama named as the next reincarnation, the Panchen Lama, was kidnapped. Some believe that the Dalai Lama should not be reincarnated because of the Chinese government’s undue power over this religious tradition. The absence of the Dalai Lama could negatively impact the Tibetans, and the world. Currently, Dalai Lama glues the Tibetan community together, preventing infiltration by the Communist Party. Also, Buddhism, like other world religions, contains economic, political, cultural, and social implications. A host of issues could result from the absence of a Buddhist leader. Although the Dalai Lama’s plan for reincarnation remains vague, the Dalai Lama has declared, “no recognition or acceptance should be given to 10

World Religions

a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China.” Works Cited Beech, Hannah. “China Says It Will Decide Who the Dalai Lama Shall Be Reincarnated As.” Time, time.com/3743742/dalai-lama- china-reincarnation-tibet-buddhism/. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018. The Dalai Lama. “Reincarnation.” His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, 24 Sept. 2011, www.dalailama.com/the-dalai-lama/biogra phy-and-daily-life/reincarnation. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018.

Thus I Have Heard: Parable of the Fruit Emilia Onuonga ’19 Two sisters, Meihui and Xiaohui, had been eating unhealthy food during their whole life time. One day when they were 11, they both become very ill. In order to heal, their parents decided that they needed to visit the doctor. The doctor, not surprised, diagnosed their sickness immediately and said “This sickness is a part of growing which we all experience. In order to heal, you must frequently eat the fruit at your house.” Meihui and Xiaohui thanked the doctor for giving them an answer to their sickness, and proceeded to walk out the door. Yet, as they walked out, the doctor exclaimed: Please don’t forget to enjoy the fruit! That is the only way that you can heal!” Meihui was the only sister to hear the words, because Xiaohui was too busy thinking about her plan to rid herself of the sickness. When they got home, Meihui and Xiaohui both began to eat the fruit. In the beginning when they both had empty stomachs, Meihui and Xiaohui loved and treasured each bite of the fruit. Yet one day, Xiaohui decided to change her eating patterns. Having tasted the splendid sweetness of the fruit, Xiaohui thought that the treatment plan would properly heal her if she continued eating and eating. Xiaohui would go to the kitchen and fill her stomach with the fruit, thinking that she was mastering the art of eating and therefore, healing. Since she was simply eating to eat, she was never able to fully enjoy the food. On the other hand, Meihui, who had not eaten excessively as her sister had done, had a fresh and empty stomach and craved the fruit each time. Meihui moderate intake allowed her to truly enjoy and immerse herself in each bite of the fruit, and slowly she began to heal. Later that day, the sisters went to the kitchen to eat fruit again. Meihui hurried to the kitchen with her empty belly which grumbled for fruit. Each time Meihui ate a bite, she felt as if she was was eating the fruit for the first time. On the other hand, Xiaohui stomach had began to swell with the excessive food she had already eaten, and so she was therefore, not hungry. Xiaohui, who had a full belly, was unable to enjoy the true essence of the fruit. Meihui noticed her sister’s rising belly and asked Xiaohui: “Sister, why do you eat so much?” Xiaohui becoming defensive answered: “I must eat and eat to heal myself. Do not judge my exploration; now I ask you: Why do you eat as you do?” Meihui, sensing the defense in her sister’s tone answered in a soft tone: “I ask because I care for you. Sister, I eat as I do 12

World Religions

because it is true nature. Eating too much or too little may bring discomfort to your stomach. Do you enjoy the fruit?” Xiaohui, unwilling to reveal the truth, joked with her sister: “Of course, I do. My big stomach is not a problem but a sign that I am healing- it shows that I am full of nutrients.” Meihui, not wanting to anger her sister, stopped asking her questions. When eating, Xiaohui felt as if each bite of the fruit was bland, but convinced herself to continue eating to heal herself. Though the fruit reached her tongue and her stomach, the fruit never settled in her heart. She began to associate her full belly and experience of eating with the ignorant idea that she was healing. Xiaohui went to bed and began to feel pangs in her stomach. As Xiaohui slept in discomfort because of the fruit, Meihui allowed the fruit to settle in her stomach and nourish her heart. This pattern continued for weeks. After sometime had passed, their doctor called them up for a check-up, and the sisters went in hope that they were on the correct path of healing.When they got to the doctor, the doctor said that Meihui had healed, and that the health of Xiaohui had actually worsened. Xiaohui grew very confused and upset. The doctor, noticing Xiaohui ‘s discomfort, said: “Xiaohui, you did not heal properly because the fruit did not settle into your heart and nourish you. Your full stomach prevented you from truly appreciating the fruit that you were eating. Also, your swelling belly and stomach pains were not good signs but warnings from the body to slow down.” The doctor also commentated on their empty bellies, explaining that Meihui was able to truly enjoy the fruit because 13

she had an empty belly. Xiaohui confused, remarked, “But I was eating and eating to fulfill myself with the fruit!” The doctor answered: “Ah, I see that you are confused. Because you ate just to eat, you ate for greediness. You must eat as your sister did, with the sole purpose to enjoy the fruit. You can only truly enjoy the fruit when your stomach is empty.” Xiaohui realised her mistake and grew very upset. “Do not be disheartened!” said the doctor. “This is the journey; you must learn and grow. Make sure to eat with empty belly so that you can heal.” When Meihui and Xiaohui returned home for dinner; Meihui,who had an empty belly, was eager to eat dinner. On the other hand, Xiaohui decided that it was best to rest and let the food settle in. Xiaohui reflected on what the doctor said and was on her way to truly appreciating the fruit and healing.

Introduction to Religious Studies

The Sacred Feminine’s Presence in Hinduism and Islam Anika Bagaria ’20 “We can only be truly human through our connection to the Sacred Feminine. She is part of us and we are part of Her. If we deny our feminine aspect, we lead incomplete lives. We need the Goddess in our lives to repair, to nurture, and to heal” (Goel). These evocative and intriguing words belong to Dr. Madan Lal Goel, a Professor of Religion and Political Science at the University of West Florida. Islam and Hinduism have co-existed, molding and impacting each other, for centuries. However, in Islam, the concept of female divinity seems to be obscure. Yet as we reflect on Hindu Goddesses, we are able to perceive a similar presence in Islam — and although the sacred feminine may not be as discernible in Islam, this does not make its purpose any less significant. Utilizing Elizabeth A. Johnson’s critical lens of gender in terms of speech about God, one can find feminine characteristics and terms in the Quran, similar to Hinduism’s feminine embodiment of similar qualities. Furthermore, upon analyzing both the Bhagavad Gita and the Quran, one can observe prominent female divine entities that are both similar and different in various ways. Thus, in analyzing Hinduism’s evident forms of the sacred feminine, the necessity of female divinity is made apparent, illuminating the hidden sacred feminine of Islam. Hindu elements of divine femininity are clearly demonstrated through its manifestations of Shakti, or the Mother Goddess. According to The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of World Religions, Shakti is deemed “the ultimate source of all things,” and “is based on the fundamental belief that all goddesses are manifestations of a single great ‘Goddess,’ or mahadevi” (Hay). Together, the feminine and masculine forces of divinity constitute Brahman, or the ultimate universal force. Thus, one can indeed make the claim that “Hindus consider the dualistic relationship between the female and male essential to universal order on all levels” (Hay). The balance of the sacred feminine and masculine is portrayed through the Saguna Brahman, which exemplifies Brahman with attributes — in other words, this form depicts the universal force as Gods and Goddesses. Saguna Brahman serves as the foundation for Nirguna Brahman, which stands as the universal force without attributes, described as an all-powerful, all-knowing light or force. The three principal forms of the Divine Mother are Lakshmi, 15

Saraswati, and Parvati, whose masculine counterparts are Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva respectively. Each representation of shakti represents an aspect of our jiva and atman, our lesser and greater selves. Lakshmi signifies wealth and prosperity, Saraswati signifies knowledge and harmony, and Parvati signifies motherly strength and devotion, among various other attributes. Therefore, while the Upanishads, Vedas, and other Hindu texts may often represent a masculine side of Brahman, referring to the Lord as “He,” the Goddess is nonetheless definitively exemplified throughout Hinduism. After exploring the sacred feminine’s significance in Hinduism, we understand that it is a central force of the universe and therefore must be present in other religions, prompting us to discover its existence in Islam. Thus firstly, after utilizing Johnson’s critical lens of gender, we see that there are valued qualities referred to with feminine pronouns in both Islam and Hinduism. While Johnson’s discourse concerns Christianity, it can still be applied to the central texts of Hinduism and Islam. Through her critical lens, Johnson explains the repercussions of when male pronouns are used to define God exclusively, literally, and patriarchally. When male pronouns are applied exclusively, Johnson writes that this action “[causes] the rest to be forgotten or marginalized,” saying that “thus, speech about God in female metaphors or in images taken from the natural world lies fallow, and can even appear deviant” (Johnson 33). Acknowledging that the texts describe God as beyond gender, Johnson still affirms that the constant and often literal usage of male pronoun suggests that “maleness is an essential character of divine being” (33). Towards the conclusion of her piece, Johnson speaks of the sociological and psychological ramifications of this classification of God, stating, “religious symbol systems focused around exclusively male images of divinity create the impression that female power can never be fully legitimate or wholly beneficent” (38). Almost always, the Bhagavad Gita and the Quran utilize the pronoun “He” when referring to God — this can be seen as inaccurate and unfair, particularly when considering Johnson’s words. Both religions possess the sacred feminine, yet the generalization of “He” overlooks this fact. Nevertheless, upon scrutinizing the religious texts, a scholar can find various female pronouns and words of feminine background to describe divine qualities that include knowledge, mercy, compassion, and infiniteness. Thus, we see that although some parts of the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita overlook the sacred feminine, others clearly exemplify it. According to an article titled “Islam and the Divine Feminine,” learned Muslim scholars state that “‘Allah is Absolute’ is the principle of masculinity, and ‘Allah is Infinite’ is the principle of feminin16

Introduction to Religious Studies ity” (Adi Shakti). One need only look towards the Quran for evidence of this claim. Allah is often referred to as al-Hakm, which means Wise One — this title is utilized with the feminine pronoun. In other words, wisdom is portrayed as a woman. Similarly, in Hinduism, knowledge as depicted through Goddess Saraswati, a manifestation of Shakti. Allah is also named Al Rahman, or Merciful One, and Al Raheem, or Compassionate One. Both of these titles stem from the Arabic word “rahim,” which translates to “source of life,” or “womb,” and thus are used with a feminine pronoun. Hinduism’s Parvati stands as a similar force of compassion and mercy, serving as a symbol of motherly strength. This last example would perhaps be the most remarkable feminine title of Allah — Al-Dhaat, which means Divine Essence. A Sufi scholar (Sufism is a branch of Islam) named Ibn Arabi stated in the 12th century, “I sometimes employ the feminine pronoun in addressing Allah, keeping in view The Essence, Al-Dhaat” (Adi Shakti). This clearly demonstrates the magnitude and value of the title Al-Dhaat, for the title signifies Beyond Being. The fact that Al-Dhaat, one of Allah’s most significant titles, is utilized with a female pronoun clearly demonstrates the presence of the sacred feminine in Islam. Furthermore, Al-Dhaat is uttered at the beginning of various surahs and throughout Muslims’ salaat, which is Islam’s Second Pillar consisting of five daily prayers. Thus, this feminine title is a constant aspect of Muslims’ everyday lives, and it can be directly compared to the term Shakti in Hinduism. In fact, in the branch of Sufism, once can encounter “a distinct, explicit preference for the feminine aspect of Allah, especially the nature of ultimate Divine Reality as essentially feminine” (Adi Shakti). Interestingly enough, “Islam and the Divine Feminine” contends that “it is held by some Islamic scholars” that Allah was referred to as both “She” and “He” in the Quran originally (Adi Shakti). Regardless, while it is true that the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita now almost exclusively refer to God or a universal force as “He,” there are also feminine divine aspects that take the pronoun of “She.” Furthermore, after studying the descriptions of divinity in the Quran and comparing them to the Bhagavad Gita, one can observe how Islam contains a feminine divine entity, a concept more concrete than the utilization of feminine pronouns. This can be seen through the motherly depictions of Allah and the descriptions of Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter. Before delving into this comparison and realization, we must first establish the risk of what may come by doing so. Keeping Diana Eck’s principles in mind, the mission is not to approach this discourse with an attitude of inclusivism but rather with one of pluralism — As Prothero stated, “God 17

is not One.” Islam and Hinduism are, regardless of their intricate and numerous ties and relationships, fundamentally different religions. While the concepts are similar, Hinduism’s Brahman cannot be equated to Islam’s Tawhid, even though both deal with a single, universal force. This is because the forces are represented in different manners and through different manifestations, and they involve different practices and beliefs in order to unite one’s soul with these forces. With this being established, one cannot utilize my evidence to draw the conclusion that Islam possesses “Goddesses” or that Allah is a “Goddess.” Instead, one can simply make observations about the relationships between Muslim and Hindu versions of the sacred feminine. Through various scenes in the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita, Allah and Krishna are characterized as mothers, a role that often stands as the epitome of the sacred feminine. In one Islamic hadith, a mother loses her son during the conquest of Mecca but later finds him. This hadith then states: “The Prophet asked, ‘Do you think this woman could throw her son in the fire?’ They answered, ‘No.’ He then said: ‘Allah is more merciful to His servants than this woman to her son’” (Salter, Hadith in The Huffington Post). This hadith clearly illustrates Allah through a motherly figure, exemplifying Islam’s sacred feminine. Furthermore, as stated before, the branch of Sufism particularly emphasizes the feminine aspects of Islam. A Sufi poet named Rumi wrote in his poem titled “Masnavi,”: “Woman is the radiance of God, she is not your beloved. She is the Creator — you could say that she is not created” (Salter, Masnavi I:2437 in The Huffington Post). These vivid lines portray a woman as the Creator, as a motherly figure, once again declaring the presence of the divine feminine. Hinduism echoes similar sentiments in the Bhagavad Gita, as Lord Krishna states, “I am the Father and the Mother of the universe, I am the highest to be known, The Purifier, the Holy Om, and the three Vedas” (Goel, Bhagavad Gita 9:17 in The Sacred Feminine in Hinduism). This stanza explicitly states “Mother” and “Father,” showing both the feminine and masculine aspects of Brahman — thus Allah’s motherly side and Shakti prove to be similar. Furthermore, Islam also represents the sacred feminine through Fatima, who is the daughter of Muhammad. It is 18

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crucial to acknowledge that Fatima is not God in Islam; she is not the feminine equivalent of Allah. As the First Pillar of Islam, Shahadah, explains, Allah is God while Muhammad is solely His messenger, and thus, Fatima most definitely cannot be considered Allah. Nonetheless, Fatima is believed to be divine as “according to Islamic scholarship [...], the love of the Prophet and those whom He loved [...] is a sure pathway to achieve the love of God. In this regard, the love for Fatima is divinely sanctified since she was the most loved one of the Prophet” (Alam). Additionally, Fatima was conceived on the Night of Ascension, further suggesting divinity. Fatima holds great influence in the faith. As the Kenz Al-Omal hadith collection states, “On the Day of Judgement, a caller will call out, ‘lower your gaze until Fatima has passed’” (Alam, Hadith in Technology of the Heart). Throughout Islamic works, Fatima can be portrayed through a hand, each finger representing a Pillar of Islam — Shahadah, Salaat, Zakat, Sawm, and Hajj. Overall, while Fatima can perhaps be deemed similar to Shakti, Allah’s feminine side can perhaps be further connected to Hinduism because Allah is the ultimate force, while Fatima is not. Thus, Islamic sacred feminine is seen through Allah’s motherly portrayal and Fatima’s strength, and these figures prove to hold similarities to Shakti. Therefore, by viewing Islam through the lens of the Hindu concept of Shakti, we can discover the elements of the sacred feminine in Islam through various feminine terms, Allah’s motherly depiction, and Fatima. 19

The fact that the Islamic divine feminine is less visible and apparent does not make it any less significant — the sacred feminine plays pivotal roles in both Islam and Hinduism. While both representations prove to be different, they contain the similar underlying themes. Ultimately, by utilizing certain aspects of one religion to another, one can make several observations and take away various lessons, helping her comprehend both religions at a deeper level. Works Cited Alam, Sadi. “Divine Feminine in Islam and Fatima.” Technology of the Heart, 2017, www.techofheart.co/2011/05/divine-feminine-in-islam-andfatima_18.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017. Goel, Dr. Madan Lal. The Sacred Feminine in Hinduism. U of West Florida, uwf.edu/lgoel/documents/ASacredFeminineinHinduism.pdf. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017. Hay, Jeff T. “Shakti.” The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of World Religions, edited by Linda Holler, Greenhaven Press, 2007, pp. 284-285. Gale Virtual Reference Library, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GVRL&sw=w&u=la wr21149&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX3205600339&asid=0aed0203 398e52808d225f5d66536dd2. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017. Islam and the Divine Feminine. Adi Shakti, 2017. Adi Shakti, www.adishakti.org/text_files/islam_and_the_divine_feminine.htm. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017. Johnson, Elizabeth A. She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York, Crossroad Publishing Company. Salter, Shahla Khan. “Inside Allah, the One Divine Mother and the Conscience of Islam.” The Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.ca/shahlakhan-salter/inside-allah-the-one-divivine_b_8923392.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Introduction to Religious Studies

Islam in Buddhism - A Connection to Achieve the Ultimate Goal Cate Levy ’20 As Muhammad Ali once recognized, “Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths” (BrainyQuote). This famous Islamic boxer recognized that all religions encompass aspects that help humans better understand the world around them and how to live in it. No single religion reveals the only way of achieving complete contentment. On the contrary, actually, it is when religions are joined, hand in hand, that they can reveal deeper truths than what might be obvious information in only one faith. The combination of Islam and Buddhism is an excellent example of this. Islam and Buddhism are two of the world’s most studied religions, and while on the surface seem to have little in common, they are quite connected when looked at together. Fundamental ideals of Islam, like the concept of jihad or struggle, actually help Buddhists better comprehend their practice, and achieve the final goal of their religion, nirvana. Although Buddhism and Islam differ in their perception of the use of suffering, the two religious practices fundamentally share the same ideas in this area, as greater jihad helps Buddhists understand the first and final of the Four Nodssble Truths, and ultimately helps them to achieve nirvana. The notion of struggle, or suffering, in Islam and Buddhism is quite different in the way it is used. In Buddhism, a fundamental ideal is that suffering is what holds people back from achieving nirvana, or from extinguishing “desire, hatred,... ignorance and, ultimately,... suffering and rebirth” (Britannica Academic). The Buddha once said in a teaching of his that the only parts of life are “suffering and the end of suffering” (Four Noble Truths 44). In order to put an end to rebirth and suffering, one must get rid of all selfish desires by first recognizing that all of life is suffering. This notion is further developed in the first of the Four Noble Truths, Dukkha. An individual must also recognize that craving and desire causes suffering, that suffering can have an end, and through the fourth Noble Truth, Magga, that “there is a path which leads to the end of suffering” (Four Noble Truths 45). In order to reach nirvana, one must rid their life of suffering through the Eightfold Path. Suffering must be put out, extinguished from life, which is what the term nirvana literally means. Suffering is problem21

atic, rather than essential in Buddhism. If suffering could be annihilated, Buddhists would be so much closer to their end goal, if not already there. However, then Buddhists would also have nothing to work towards. On the other hand, struggle is an absolute necessity to Islam. Jihad, sometimes considered a sixth pillar of Islam (The Vision of Islam 20), literally means struggle. In Islam, jihad is typically emphasized by quoting the Prophet Muhammad, after he returned from a battle in Medina, with enemies of the newly developed faith. He said, “‘We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.’ The people said, ‘O Messenger of God, what jihad could be greater than struggling against the unbelievers with the sword?’ He replied, ‘Struggling against the enemy in your own breast’” (The Vision of Islam 21). This inner struggle is commonly referred to as mujahadah. In Islam, the end goal of the religion is to submit to Allah, which is what the term Islam actually means. This undertaking, “submission[,] demands struggle” (The Vision of Islam 21). By undergoing the difficult task of abiding by the five pillars of Islam, extreme struggle is demanded of the Muslim people. If a Muslim is truly putting in the effort to submit to God, then they are struggling, or suffering. In Islam, struggle is a vital part of the religion, but in Buddhism, this suffering must be eliminated. It is important to realize however, that, first of all, while struggle and suffering are different words, they essentially mean the same thing and elucidate the same ideas. Struggle is often used interchangeably with words 22

Introduction to Religious Studies like brawl, conflict, or extreme effort. Suffering is a result of these things. Struggle leads to suffering, and vice versa. If one is suffering, they must struggle to stop this distress. While the entire objective of Buddhism is to get rid of suffering, suffering is still a necessary part of the religion, because an individual must recognize that such hardship exists before they can try and remove it from their life to achieve nirvana. In Islam, one complex idea is something known as Dhikr, or remembrance. In this context, Dhikr relates to remembering struggle and suffering exist. This knowledge helps Buddhists recognize the cravings in their lives, so they know what must be eliminated. While reading the Quran and undergoing this inward struggle, Muslims are supposed “to have muraqabah (consciousness of one’s sins and actions)” (Hussain ProQuest). Once again, Muslims teach Buddhists to constantly be aware of the selfish desires in their lives, so they can remove them, all of this through their own struggle. Furthermore, Islam teaches Buddhists how to follow the Eightfold Path in a sense, or how to rid their lives of suffering. Another term in Islam, hikma, “comes from the triliteral roots Ha, Kaf, and Mim, which imply to restrain for the purposes of improvement” (The Four Paths to Wisdom ProQuest). Just like Muslims, Buddhists must restrain themselves from egocentric wants, for the purpose of reaching an overarching end goal. Additionally, Muslims strive to live as the Prophet Muhammad did. He undertook jihad, lesser and greater, as he called it, “the jihad of the soul” (Washington Post ProQuest). Mujahadah is “referred to as the greater jihad since people spend their entire lives struggling against the base desires within them” (Washington Post ProQuest). This can be a daunting task, but Muslims undertake greater jihad for the purpose of submitting themselves to God. Buddhists can learn something from Muslims in this sense. In order for the individuals of both religious paths to achieve their ultimate goal, they must struggle with the selfish desires existing inside of them. When Buddhism and Islam are studied together, the two religions illuminate crucial information for people of both faiths. Specifically, however, Islam and the concept of greater jihad, or mujahadah, helps Buddhists better understand the first and fourth noble truths. This key idea of inner struggle in Islam allows Buddhists to grasp how to rid their lives of suffering and recognize that suffering exists in each individual’s life. This Muslim concept makes a Buddhists’ task to extinguish selfish desires from their life much simpler and comprehendible. When Islam serves as a complement to Buddhism, both members of the faiths learn something much more valuable and intriguing than they ever would have learned without the other 23

religion. There is something invaluable to placing religions side by side, and using one as a funnel to reveal a deeper truth about the other. As the common saying goes, “two is better than one.” Works Cited Abdullah, Salih. “Seven Steps to Spiritual Intelligence.” Intellectual Discourse, vol. 23, no. 2, 2015, pp. 304-307, Religion Database, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1761238437?account id=12012. “The Four Noble Truths.” A Short Introduction to Buddhism, by Damian Keown. Magid, Imam M., and Samuel Ross. “The Four Paths to Wisdom.” Islamic Horizons, vol. 40, no. 4, Jul, 2011, pp. 58-59, Religion Database, https://search.proquest.com/docview/877660448?account id=12012. “The Many Meanings of Jihad to 2 Prominent Muslims.” The Washington Post, Jul 28, 2007, The Washington Post, https://search.proquest. com/docview/410139553?accountid=12012. “Nirvana.” Britannica Academic, Encyclopædia Britannica, 1 Nov. 2017. academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/nirvana/55914. Accessed 13 Nov. 2017. “Religious Studies.” BrainyQuote, www.brainyquote.com/topics/religions. “A Sixth Pillar? Jihad and Mujahada.” The Vision of Islam.

Studies in Christian Origins

Shaping Jesus’ Resurrection Kevin Xiao ’19 I argue that Mark, Matthew, and Luke shaped their narratives of Jesus’ resurrection scene to advance their own distinctive agendas. To uncover the motives of each writer, I will first examine sections which Mark emphasized and then use the method of redaction criticism and examine any text added or removed in either Matthew or Luke, but not in Mark. Per the two-source hypothesis, Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels separately with access to Mark’s story and another unknown, lost source. Explaining double and triple tradition among the synoptic gospels, the two-source hypothesis implies that Mark was written before both Matthew and Luke. Moreover, the writing of the Gospel of Mark precedes the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the conclusion of the First Jewish-Roman War, while Matthew and Luke wrote after these events. Following the destruction of the Jewish Temple, the Sadducee sect of Judaism lost much of its standing and traction in the Jewish community as they had derived much of their power from the Temple priesthood. With a sectarian power struggle emerging from the religious power vacuum in Jerusalem, various messianic sects—including the Pharisees, the John the Baptist sect, and the Jesus sect (of which Matthew was a leading member)—fought over not only who the true Messiah was, but also who should lead the Jews politically. With the shortest retelling of Jesus’ resurrection of all the synoptic gospels, the Gospel of Mark is understandably missing many of the features found in Matthew and Luke. However, Mark’s omission of any rehabilitation of Jesus’ apostles after their betrayal and rejection of Him is particularly telling (Mark 14:72). Although Mark does not explicitly condemn the apostles, Mark repetitively depicts Jesus’ disciples as weak, worldly, and ignorant throughout his gospel (Mark 14:37-38, Mark 9:30-35). Thus, by leaving no accounts of the disciples’ redeeming deeds, Mark implicitly castigates the apostles and promotes an unfavorable view of the Twelve. While Mark’s decision to censure the apostles seems to denote no apparent ulterior motive, the author ravages the reputations of the apostles and their descendants. Through his emphasis on the apostles’ weaknesses and failures, Mark strips the disciples of their authority and influence in the ensuing Christian movement, in direct opposition to the doctrine of apostolic succession in the Roman Catholic Church. 25

Writing in a separate environment from Mark, Matthew has very different incentives and objectives in his gospel. In the finer details, Mark specifically notes that Joseph of Arimathea, the man who went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body, was an upright member of the Jewish council which had crucified Jesus (Mark 15:43). However, Matthew eliminates the fact that Joseph was a part of the city council, writing that Joseph was a disciple of Jesus instead (Matthew 27:57). Exemplifying Matthew’s goal to paint the entire Jewish council as evil conspirators, this revision removes a detail that casts doubt on the wickedness of the council, composed mainly of Pharisees and Sadducees, and makes it clear that the council was capable of no good. Since Matthew was embroiled in the sectarian power struggle when he wrote his gospel, accentuating the iniquity of his main opposition promoted his own religious sect and influence. This continues Matthew’s pattern of disparaging competing religious factions, such as when the crowds and priests accept the guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion (Matt 27:25). In the antithesis to Mark’s view on the apostles, Matthew attributes a greater and more honorable role to the Twelve (without Judas) and their chosen successors in Jesus’ legacy. While Mark notably ignores the apostles, Matthew adds a section where Jesus meets his disciples and states three things: the authority of heaven has been given to Jesus, the disciples must go and teach the citizens of all nations, and that Jesus will always be with them in these pursuits (Matt 28:19-20). Since Jesus has heaven’s authority and He will always be with the disciples, the will of God has been technically vested in the apostles as they spread the mission of Jesus. Giving the apostles authority by proxy, Matthew deliberately granted the disciples full authority in Christianity, as opposed to relegating the disciples to minor roles like Mark. As a leader of the Jesus messianic sect, Matthew must also respond to any claims contradicting Jesus’ miraculous acts. In Mark, the resurrection scene includes Jesus’ burial and then disappearance from the tomb, only logically implying that Jesus must have risen from the dead (Mark 15:46, 16:6). Another explanation was that someone else, possibly the apostles, stole Jesus’ body from the tomb overnight, as rising from the dead did not seem as plausible. Since this theory reduced Jesus’ resurrection to nothing but a myth, Matthew notes that the Temple priests had anticipated Jesus’ resurrection and had secured the sepulcher by establishing a guard outside (Matt 27:66). In addition, Matthew’s gospel specifies that it was the Temple priests who spread the idea that the disciples stole away Jesus 26

Studies in Christian Origins

overnight (Matt 28:16). Alluding to Matthew’s motivations, this section simultaneously verifies the accounts of Matthew’s sect and diminishes the priests, his political adversaries. In the Gospel of Luke, the context the author wrote in has less of an effect upon the resurrection narrative. Returning to the characterization of Joseph of Arimathea, Luke adds to Mark’s description, a respected member of the council AND one “who had not consented to their purpose and deed” (Luke 23:51). By showing how a high-ranking individual like Joseph could see the inherent wrong in crucifying Jesus, Luke tries to convey Jesus’ innocence through the perspectives of others. Joseph’s opposition to the council’s decisions continues this trend in the gospel, as Luke also emphasizes Jesus’ innocence with Pilate, Herod, and the prisoner next to Jesus during the crucifixion (Luke 23:4, 14, 41). Luke’s decision to keep each of these instances signifies his aim to make it obvious that Jesus was punished wrongfully and that his guiltlessness was apparent to many. Characterizing Jesus as an upright and sinless man, Luke takes every chance he can to build Jesus’ reputation in the eyes of the reader. While Mark ends abruptly and Matthew uses his gospel to reiterate the miracle of Jesus, Luke recounts Jesus’ virtuousness and his fame in the Jewish community. Not found in Mark, Jesus’ reappearance to two women after his resurrection highlights his renown across Jerusalem and then the 27

sorrow that accompanied his crucifixion (Luke 24:18-21). This revision further promotes Jesus and his message, but is consistent with other changes made by only Luke of the three synoptic gospels. Writing only two pacifist verses about Jesus’ actions in the Temple trouble scene and omitting completely an odd tale where Jesus appears to throw a temper tantrum at a fig tree, Luke markedly tones down any conflict in Jesus’ conduct (Luke 19:45-46, fig tree story absent in Luke but can be found in Mark 11:12-14). Although Luke’s agenda is subtler than Matthew’s, the Gospel of Luke ameliorates potential embarrassments on Jesus’ part and amplifies Jesus’ successes and repute. From Mark’s animosity for the apostles, Matthew’s political struggles, and Luke’s vision of Jesus’ image, the individual motives of each of the synoptic gospels becomes more and more evident through the scrutiny of any text each writer includes or omits. Revealing this intrinsic bias demonstrates the disadvantages of reading just one version or even four gospels. As seen in the reports of Jesus’ resurrection, readers should explore multiple gospels to get the fullest account, noting that each version has its own distinctive biases and motivations.

Ethics

What is the “Good”?: Objectivism vs. Virtue Ethics in the Freeloader Dilemma Ivy Zhang ’19 A woman named Eleanor leeches off her neighbor’s Wi-Fi for free without heDr neighbor’s knowing. She does not view the situation as theft because her neighbor can keep using the Wi-Fi at virtually no expense. However, she did nothing to deserve the free Wi-Fi and withholds the information from her neighbor. This circumstance presents the ethical dilemma of determining if she should use the Wi-Fi, and it raises a broader moral question: Should we take something undeserved from others? We can look to two methods for determining the “good” that Eleanor should consider when deciding what action to take: Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics and Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Virtue Ethics tells us to develop virtuous character, follow the doctrine of the mean, and carry out actions with priority to the community. Objectivism, however, advocates for developing individuality and has four rational virtues to guide us that I will explain later. Rand believed that acting in rational self-interest leads to fulfillment, while selfsacrifice is evil. I will argue that Rand’s Objectivism is better than Virtue Ethics for resolving Eleanor’s ethical dilemma and deciding the “good.” While Virtue Ethics recognizes a duty to the neighbor and tells us not to take what is not ours, taking action based on the opinions of others will not bring fulfillment to an individual, thus showing that Rand’s Objectivism is better for determining the “good”. Eleanor should follow Rand’s Objectivism and use the Wi-Fi because the “good” is her best rational self-interest. First, I will define the “good” as “that at which all things aim” (Marino 46). To Rand, the “good” is individual happiness, for she said that Man’s “highest moral purpose is achievement of his own happiness. [...] Each man must […] follow his own rational selfinterest” (Wallace 3:30). By happiness, Objectivism does not refer to the immediate pleasures like those of Hedonism; instead, it “involves taking into consideration both the short-term and the long-term consequences of our actions” (Boss 203). Additionally, Rand’s The Fountainhead reasons why we should follow our rational self-interest rather than the interest of others, explaining, “Everything [man] needs has to be produced. And here man [...] can survive in only one of two ways—by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others.[…] An agreement 29

reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average” (231). When a group of us people collaborate, we reach a collective happiness. However, none of us reach full individual happiness because we become a “parasite”, prioritizing other’s opinions while compromising some of our own ideals to serve the group. Objectivism says that, instead, we should act in our best rational self-interest just like Eleanor should use the Wi-Fi. Furthermore, Rand’s Objectivism has four main rational virtues that cultivate individuality rather than social virtues and guide us to take action morally: Be independent, have integrity, be honest, and be just (210). She also said we should arrive at action “by voluntary consent, voluntary cooperation of free man, unforced” (Wallace 11:20). Thus, Eleanor should be independent and not let social pressures—for example other’s opinions that using the Wi-Fi and withholding it from the neighbor is being selfish, stealing, lying, and thus being immoral—force or persuade her into sacrificing her self-interest and happiness. However, believers of Virtue Ethics may find faults in and argue against the individualistic and straightforward nature of Objectivism. First, Aristotle said of people uninvolved in society, “A man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or who has no need to share, because he’s already self-sufficient, such a person must be either a beast or a god” (Sandel 11:03). To Aristotle, there is no way to live as a human and be isolated because only by collaborating with others in the com30

Ethics munity can we achieve his interpretation of the “good”: eudaemonia, or fulfillment. He argued that we have a duty to the “polis” or political community because doing so makes us realize the good life (Sandel 9:09). Eleanor, therefore, would have a duty to consider the opinion of the neighbor and consult with him or her about using the Wi-Fi. Objectivism, however, ignores the neighbor, who is an obstacle to Eleanor’s self-interest. Second, critics may point out that Objectivism is inconsistent and could also advise Eleanor not to take the Wi-Fi. It tells us to act in our best rational self-interest, but also to be just and “neither seek nor give that which is unearned or undeserved,” (Boss 210). What should we do if we encounter a situation like Eleanor’s in which using the Wi-Fi both acts in her self-interest and is undeserved? Aristotle believed that we achieve eudaemonia by distributing justice to the people that deserve it, honoring their virtues (Sandel 2:05). Hence, opposers of Objectivism can argue that using Virtue Ethics is better to determine the “good” because it clearly tells us to not take anything undeserved with no contradiction. Third, critics of Rand may question her clear-cut analysis of morality and immorality and ask, “Are there really only two alternatives: selfishness or self-sacrifice?” (Boss 224). Rather than view our values as two opposites, Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics sees virtue as a spectrum. Aristotle believed, “There are three kinds of disposition, then, two of them vices, involving excess and deficiency respectively, and one a virtue, viz. the mean” (Marino 77). Deficiency and excess, endpoints of the spectrum, are vices, and the mean, virtue, lies somewhere between them. Our characters should aim toward the mean, and although they may not be completely virtuous, they will be close. From a Virtue Ethics perspective, Aristotle’s method is better in the determining the “good” because it does not label our actions as merely moral (selfish) or immoral (self-sacrificial); it recognizes a gray area between the two that realistically represents the range of our behaviors. However, I will provide counterarguments against the Virtue Ethics criticism to prove that Objectivism is better. In response to the first criticism, Objectivism actually embraces collaboration: “Helping others is often in our own self-interest because they will then be more likely to help us when we need them” (Boss 202). Objectivists are not totally isolated and selfsufficient like Aristotle claimed they are; Rand encouraged relationships and valued interactions with others because she believed they would help both people involved to pursue their own self-interests and achieve individual happiness. Thus, Objectivists still collaborate, foster relationships, and benefit others. In Eleanor’s situation, she should use the Wi-Fi because if helping others is in her self-interest, more people would benefit than 31

argue that Eleanor can use the undeserved Wi-Fi according to Rand’s view of justice, although under certain conditions. Objectivism states, “Rand referred to voluntary cooperation as the principle of trade or justice. Doing something for someone else is morally justified only when we can expect to get something of similar value in exchange” (210). We are allowed to sacrifice our self-interest if we expect to take something in return that is in our self-interest later, so the interactions are a fair trade. Since the exchange is equal, it is also fair to argue that the converse should also be acceptable under Objectivism: We should be allowed to take something that is in our self-interest from others if we expect to repay them by sacrificing our self-interest later. Using this argument, if Eleanor does something for the neighbor that is in the neighbor’s self-interest in the future, the exchange would be equal, and Eleanor’s using the Wi-Fi would therefore be morally acceptable. Countering the third criticism that the clear-cut two sides to Rand’s view of virtue is unrealistic, Aristotle’s view of virtue, the doctrine of the mean, is even more impractical. We can apply Objectivism’s concept of morality to real life, but in particular situations, we cannot identify what the mean is. According to Aristotle himself, “To the mean the deficiency or excess is more opposed” (Marino 78). Since the deficiency and excess are not always equidistant from the mean, defining the “good” is difficult. Each mean is also different for each situation, so infinite means exist. It is improbable that we will know what the mean of the particular situation is, where we stand on the spectrum, and how to self-correct. Thus, Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean offers no concrete, specific guidelines. In Eleanor’s case, taking the Wi-Fi, something that is not hers, is excess. Not taking the Wi-Fi, contrarily, is deficiency because she is altruistic. However, this example offers no discernable mean, indicating that Virtue Ethics offers a theoretical “good”, but not a clear practical one to guide our actions. Virtue Ethics is therefore idealistic, not realistic. Moreover, Rand’s two opposites of morality recognize individual and interactive circumstances. Virtue Ethics, however, tells us what is moral in the context of the community but not for individual moral decisions that don’t have consequences on others, like Eleanor’s situation. In contrast, Objectivism addresses moral problems when an individual is both alone and with other people, more versatile in helping us reach the “good” no matter which of the two contexts is used. In short, Eleanor should use the Wi-Fi because it benefits her and does not harm others. Objectivism is a better guide for Eleanor in reaching her decision because its definition of the “good” is more practical and versatile when being applied to real situations than that of Virtue Ethics. 32

Ethics

People are also not entirely secluded from others under Objectivism, so it does not reject collaboration. In addition, being forced by social pressures will prevent Eleanor from achieving happiness. Eleanor’s compromising her ideals with those of other people hinders her from achieving happiness, so she should follow Rand’s Objectivism, pursue her best rational self-interest, and use the Wi-Fi. Works Cited Boss, Judith A. Ethics for Life: a Text with Readings. Sixth ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014. Print. Marino, Gordon Daniel. Ethics: The Essential Writings. New York: Mod ern Library, 2010. Print. Ondracek, Tiffany. “Mike Wallace Interviews Ayn Rand (1959) (full In terview).” YouTube. YouTube, 17 Nov. 2012. Web. 26 Apr. 2017. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKd0ToQD00o>. Sandel, Michael. “Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? Episode 10: ‘THE GOOD CITIZEN.’” Youtube, 8 Sept. 2009, www.you tube.com/watch?time_continue=209&v=MuiazbyOSqQ. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017. Lecture.

Should We Send Astronauts into Deep Space? Erin McNulty ’19 The first man landed in space only fifty-six years ago, and since then humans have made enormous strides in space exploration. While technology rapidly improves to make deep space exploration possible, a dilemma is surfacing: is it ethical to send people into space despite the known health and safety issues? There is a huge amount of danger involved in the mission, and going to Mars would require at least 3 years in space, likely causing misery for the astronauts. However, there are many positive consequences for humanity resulting from deep space exploration, further complicating the ethical issue. Under the lens of John Mill’s Utilitarianism, which assesses the “good” in a situation based on its consequences for the overall happiness of humanity, astronauts should be sent to explore space because it has huge positive ramifications for the happiness of humanity as a whole. Despite the danger and health issues related to space exploration, willing astronauts should be sent to explore deep space because of the huge long term benefits for society involved, implying sending people to explore in space is not only necessary for humans but is also the best practice. Before delving into the issue, some background information is necessary. The space race began only 50 years ago, and since then humans have made giant strides in space exploration. However, progress has stagnated. Humans go on missions to International Space Station, but besides that we have not ventured past the moon, with our last mission to the moon being in 1972. As far as deep space exploration goes, NASA has sent robots to Mars, and both the Obama and the current Trump administration developed plans to send humans to Mars by the 2030s (Chang). Currently, the ethical implications of deep space exploration is one of the main factors holding the mission back. There are many benefits of traveling to space. The environmental and biological research conducted has positive long term impacts on humanity as a whole, as it allows us to predict and combat climate change as well as improve our biomedical technology (NASA). In addition, exploring space is shown to increase the happiness and enthusiasm for science in nations with robust space programs, encouraging young people to take up careers in STEM and increasing society’s productivity (NASA). Finally, space exploration promotes cooperation between 34

Ethics nations and causes job creation, both helping the economy and political well-being in the world. Overall, “the current generation cannot predict in detail what benefits will eventually appear as a result of its efforts. The unforeseen positive results of the past five decades indicate the great potential for space exploration to continue producing a wide range of applications and knowledge,” demonstrating that space exploration will produce lots of unforeseen good (NASA). However, there are many health and safety issues associated with deep space travel as well. Space radiation can cause cancer, and the change in gravity causes bone loss, vision problems, and loss of physical endurance (NASA). The isolation involved in the long missions could cause long term psychological conditions such as depression, and the crew’s morale would inevitably be low at times during the mission (NASA). If astronauts run into danger, nobody could come to help them and they would likely die. NASA is developing ways to fix all of these issues, and while the dangers cannot be mitigated, they would be fairly well controlled. Based on the principles of Utilitarianism, people should pursue deep space travel because it produces the most overall good for humanity. According to Mills, “...actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Marino 229). Space exploration promotes happiness in many ways: studying the environment leads to combating climate change, people are inspired by discovery in space, and working towards a common goal leads to cooperation between nations and therefore happiness. Some of the innovations that will be made possible by space exploration are light-based cancer therapy, water purification, and biomedical technology, all things that will help improve the happiness of humanity (NASA). Humans studying the Mars climate would help us to understand and combat climate change on earth, resulting in long term happiness. The thrill of exploration improves the happiness of humanity as well. This great amount of happiness produced also ties into the principles of utilitarian calculus. All of the happiness resulting from deep space exploration outweighs the pain caused. The happiness is lasting, large-scale, and very probable, while the pain of the astronauts is short-term and on a small scale, making space travel the right thing to do. In addition, utilitarianism emphasizes focusing on the longterm consequences of an action. However, it acknowledges that people often look at short term consequences instead, saying that “men often, from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable” (Marino 232). In this case, NASA is fo35

cusing on the short term consequences and emotions involved with deep space exploration as opposed to the long term effects. Critics of NASA say that they are too focused on these short term feelings, as “it’s fear holding NASA back. These are risky missions. If you want to be safe, stay on the ground” (Koebler). There is no way to completely get rid of the fear and short-term danger associated with space exploration, but that should not matter because of the extreme long-term benefits. Finally, utilitarianism emphasizes that “all grand sources of human suffering are in a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquerable by human care and effort” (Marino 238). The environmental and scientific progress made by deep space exploration will help end human pain, and so it is important for humans to pursue space travel. However, the health and safety issues with deep space travel cause some critics to say that NASA should not send people into space. Kant’s deontology would say that by sending people to space we are breaking our moral duty of not putting other people in the way of danger. In order to be allowed to send people into space, NASA would have to change their predetermined safety rules, and critics say that “liberalizing health standards across the board would completely undermine the standards in general… Modifying health standards … merely to permit long duration and exploration missions would be arbitrary” (Koebler). Kant would say that changing the rules based on circumstance implies that the rule is not valid in the first place. Even though changing the rule this time might cause good, Kant says that “between motives which cannot be brought under any principle, which lead to good only by mere accident, and very often also evil” (207). Because of this, we should not send people into space even if it produces good because doing so would require us to change our duty to keep people safe, which could result in evil in the long run. Rand’s egoism would have a different critique: we should not ask other people to sacrifice their happiness for our own. “Mars is a veritable hell for living things,” and we should not subject other people to that (Regis). Asking people to submit themselves to pain and possibly sacrifice their lives for the benefit of other people is an extreme form of altruism. Rand claims that “altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self… no man can live for another… the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation” (Boss 231). NASA, Rand would say, is exploiting astronauts by forcing them to sacrifice their own happiness. The most glaring critique crosses ethical systems: deep space exploration is and will always be extremely dangerous, and sending astronauts into space will result in health complications and possibly in death. “There’s no 36

Ethics conceivable way that, within the next few years, our engineering capabilities or understanding of things like radiation exposure in space are going to advance far enough for a mission to Mars to be acceptably “safe” for NASA” without NASA drastically changing their health standards (Koebler). Cancer, depression, and bone decay are all possible health risks, and nobody would be able to come to help if the astronauts got into trouble. Critics say that “even if the agency’s goal is to explore, it doesn’t mean that people should just accept whatever risk might be envisioned by the mission,” demonstrating the belief that the danger of deep space exploration is simply too dangerous to justify it, no matter how many positive consequences result from it (Koebler). Despite these critiques, it is imperative that we send astronauts into deep space. Kant’s critique based on deontology that it is betraying our moral duty to compromise people’s safety fails to acknowledge that exploring is an equally important duty for some humans. If we applied the duty of keeping people safe no matter the situation as a universal law, then much of human progress today would be erased. Many of the world’s great scientific and engineering innovations never would have happened: Marie Curie would have stopped her research because of radiation poisoning, the Wright brothers would have stayed safe on the ground, and Neil Armstrong would have never entered Apollo 11 out of fear of the mission failing. The issues that arise from always prioritizing safety as a universal law implies that some people’s duty should, in fact, be to sacrifice their safety for the sake of exploration, science, and the good of humanity. Rand’s egoism argument that we should not ask people to sacrifice their happiness and well-being for our benefit is flawed because it assumes that astronauts are travelling into space purely for others, instead of for their own happiness. When an astronaut was asked “if, in his professional lifetime, it had been possible to undertake the two-year mission to Mars, he would have hesitated to say yes,” he responded, “not for a second, not for a second,” while looking in amazement (Brockes). Preventing astronauts from exploring deep space is imposing a will onto others, which contradicts Rand’s principle of not interfering with other people’s happiness. The critique that space is inevitably dangerous and we should not subject astronauts to danger for their happiness fails to acknowledge that by preventing astronauts from deep space exploration, we are limiting their happiness. Utilitarianism’s only defense for this critique is that there is still more happiness than pain produced by space travel, which is a circular argument that can only be made within the system. However, examining 37

the critique under the lense of Aristotle’s virtue ethics demonstrates why it is not only ok but also ethically correct to pursue deep space travel despite the pain involved. Through virtue ethics, happiness comes from achieving eudemonia through fulfilling our telos. For many humans, especially those who choose to be an astronaut, their telos is “to explore the unknown, discover new worlds, push the boundaries of our scientific and technical limits, and then push further … [they have] the intangible desire to explore and challenge the boundaries of what we know and where we have been,” without regard for the dangerous consequences (NASA). Just because our idea of happiness is staying safe, we should not force that idea onto astronauts because everyone’s idea of happiness is different, as Aristotle says to “identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ” (Marino 48). Stopping space exploration not only minimizes happiness for humanity, it prevents the astronauts from achieving eudaimonia and becoming fulfilled. Considering this perspective in the ethical dilemma of deep space exploration adds a new facet to the debate. Because NASA is preventing astronauts from pursuing what makes them happy, they are ethically wrong for stopping deep space exploration. Deep space travel raises many health and safety issues, but it also has long-term benefits for humanity. Under the lense of Utilitarianism, deep space exploration is justified since it creates more lasting, wide-scale happiness for humanity than pain and it considers the long-term consequences rather than the short term worries based on fear. In addition, it is a step towards resolving suffering for humanity because of the environmental and biological research that can take place in space. However, both deontology and egoism critique this stance. While deontology would say that deep space travel conflicts with a predetermined duty to protect people from harm, its critique is flawed because astronauts undertake a different duty: to risk their lives for the sake of science, exploration, and the good of humanity. Rand’s egoism critique that we should not ask people to sacrifice their happiness for our own fails to realize that by preventing astronauts from exploring space we are imposing our own will on others. Finally, the critique that space is just too dangerous for ethical travel brings up the issue of what astronaut’s telos is. They have chosen possibly fatal careers because they feel that their purpose is to be explorers of the universe, and by preventing them from doing this we are limiting their happiness. Examining these issues shows that despite the danger involved, we must allow deep space exploration both for the good of humanity and for the happiness of the astronauts involved. 38

Ethics Works Cited Boss, Judith A. Ethics for Life: a Text with Readings. New York: Mc Graw-Hill, 2014. Print. Brockes, Emma. “Chris Hadfield: in space ‘you recognise the unanimity of our existence.’” The Guardian, 28 Oct. 2013, www.theguard ian.com/science/2013/oct/26/chris-hadfield-astronaut-space-in terview. Accessed 30 May 2017. Chang, Kenneth. “NASA Looks to Speed Timetable for Putting Astro nauts in Deep Space.” New York Times, www.nytimes. com/2017/02/15/science/nasa-looks-to-speed-timetable-for-put ting-astronauts-in-deep-space.html?_r=1. Accessed 30 May 2017. Koebler, Jason. “NASA Can’t Ethically Send Astronauts on One-Way Mis sions to Deep Space.” Motherboard Vice, 2 Apr. 2014, mother board.vice.com/en_us/article/nasa-cant-ethically-send-astronauts- on-one-way-missions-to-deep-space. Accessed 30 May 2017. Marino, Gordon Daniel. Ethics: the essential writings. New York: Mod ern Library, 2010. Print. NASA. Benefits Stemming from Space Exploration. International Space Exploration Coordination Group, Sept. 2013, www.nasa.gov/ sites/default/files/files/Benefits-Stemming-from-Space-Explora tion-2013-TAGGED.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2017. Regis, Ed. “Let’s Not Move to Mars.” New York Times, 21 Sept. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/lets-not-move-to-mars. html?_r=0. Accessed 30 May 2017. University of Notre Dame. “10 Emerging Ethical Dilemmas in Science and Technology.” BioScience Technology, 8 Dec. 2014, www. biosciencetechnology.com/news/2014/12/10-emerging-ethical- dilemmas-science-and-technology. Accessed 30 May 2017. “Why We Explore.” NASA, www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/ why_we_explore_main.html#.WS2ZlmgrI2x. Accessed 30 May 2017.

At the Mercy of Robots Kevin Shao ’19 As the futuristic dream of robots running the world slowly becomes a reality, the ethical implications of such automation grow in importance. From unmanned drone strikes to robots replacing human labor, the employment of machines demands ethics be applied to this entirely new field. One of the most urgent ethical gray areas is the issue of self-driving cars. The ethical dilemmas associated with autonomous cars are not hypothetical; the cars are already a reality, and they are already on the roads. Every decision that the car makes weighs the risks and the values of the occupants of the car and the outside world. The ultimate decision, then, is choosing whether to protect the occupant or an innocent pedestrian when circumstances dictate protecting both is impossible. Following the principles of Ayn Rand’s Ethical Egoism, I will argue that the car should prioritize the safety of the occupant above all else. Although this selfish mindset seems to blatantly disregard innocent human life, it would, in the long run, result in a safer society, showing Rand’s ideals of Ethical Egoism to apply best in this dilemma. The important differences between automated drivers and human drivers are two-fold. First, as a society, we keep humans accountable for their actions by punishing or rewarding them, something that is impossible to do for a computer. Self-driving cars have had an excellent track record so far. For example, Google’s fleet has only been involved in 16 accidents in over 1 million miles driven, with the autonomous vehicle being at fault for none (Titcomb). However, their numbers are still small, and accidents are bound to happen, especially as human intervention was required to avert disaster 13 times (Titcomb). When accidents inevitably happen in production, we will not be able to assign accountability, which is ethically questionable. Secondly, when humans are faced with an emergency scenario, they make a snap decision, weighing factors in the moment, with little conscious thought. However, autonomous systems must be programmed ahead of time, with all the factors being explicitly weighed in every eventuality (Lubin). Thus, the program must deliberately value some lives over others a priori, and any such prioritization of life is also ethically questionable. My argument is that a selfish mindset is best. That is, self-driving cars ought to be programmed to protect its occupants first, and only consider other human life when its occupants’ safety is assured. 40

Ethics I believe that the implementation of a selfish algorithm will ultimately lead to a safer society. Ayn Rand, a vocal advocate for Ethical Egoism, would have argued that, “people ought to pursue their rational self-interests” (Boss 202). In fact, she “consider[s] [altruism] to be evil” (Wallace 5:32). Her rejection of altruism stems from the idea that “giving without the expectation of return” is immoral (Boss 210). If a car adopts a selfless approach, it invites the possibility of sacrificing the safety of its occupant to avoid what is believed to be an innocent person, but is actually an inanimate object. While the odds are low, the use of a LIDAR unit, which detects obstacles by bouncing light off of them, means that certain identification of an obstacle is impossible (Gates). By protecting the occupant, the car will ensure at least one human life saved, which is Rand’s guarantee of return. Next, Rand believes that people would be happier as a whole if each “pursued [his] own self-interest” (Boss 211). In this case, the implementation of a selfish algorithm will cause buyers to be more comfortable in using them, knowing their safety is prioritized. Consequently, the popularity of self-driving cars will rise, and, given that human error accounts for more than 90% of car accidents, the ultimate effect is that the roads will become safer (Center for Internet and Society). Lastly, this strategy transfers the onus of safety onto society. Knowing that self-driving cars will not sacrifice its safety for the sake of others will discourage hazardous behavior such as texting while walking and jaywalking. All in all, the use of an Egoist algorithm in self-driving cars will result in safer roads, safer pedestrians, and no meaningless deaths. Many people would argue that cars should not adopt this defensive approach. Utilitarians would articulate one such argument, where they would consider the dilemma where the choice is between the occupant and 10, 100, or 1000 people in danger. To them, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Marino 229). By adopting an adamantly selfish approach, the hypothetical scenario where the lives and happiness of many are sacrificed for the life of one may come to pass. The indifference to the collective suffering of so many innocents would surely be immoral, causing discontent among society. Therefore, self-driving cars should not be programmed this way. Deontologists, especially Immanuel Kant, would argue that humans, as rational beings, must be regarded “not just as means, but also as ends in themselves,” and to “respect their dignities” (Sandel 11:23). Either decision, to protect the driver or the pedestrian, would violate the autonomy of one. That is, either the driver or the pedestrian is killed due to the calculation made by an algorithm. A computer, which is not a rational 41

being, has no right to violate the autonomy of a rational being. After all, it is generally undesirable for a universal moral law to allow for mere numbers to decide the life or death of a rational being. Therefore, it is immoral for autonomous vehicles to be on the road at all. Lastly, Mary Midglet critiqued Ethical Egoism on the basis that it “allows the powerful to exploit the weak” (Boss 226). For the dilemma of self-driving cars, Midglet would argue, a selfish strategy would put the weak, or those without autonomous vehicles, at a disadvantage. As only the rich have these cars, they need not be concerned with safety, yet the poor, without them, must always remain alert. This dichotomy is inherently unfair and unjust. I believe, however, that an Ethical Egoist approach would product the most good. First, while such an approach would seem to violate Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarian Calculus, possibly sacrificing the well being of many for one, such a view is too narrow. It only considers the extent of the pain caused by this single incident, and it ignores the far greater, albeit delayed, good of a safer society. After all, human error accounts for 90% of 40,000 motor fatalities in the United States (Korosec). Realistically, the potential damage a single car may cause cannot begin to compare to the benefit of safer roads. Second, while an automation’s deciding life and death surely violates the autonomy and dignity of humans, in the world of automobiles, there exists no idealistic way to assure the autonomy of all. In an accident, the innocent pedestrian would find no difference between a reckless driver and a calculating machine. While there are accidents, there will be violated dignities and people used as a means to the end of living. Therefore, it is insensible to prohibit a computer to make such choices, as allowing them to would also drastically decrease the number of accidents. Lastly, the exploitation of the weak, while unfair, is also unavoidable. Even in current society, those who cannot afford automobiles are already at a disadvantage to human drivers. Unless we are to do away with vehicles entirely, which would have disastrous consequences on society, inequality in society is unavoidable. The only thing we can do, then, is to try to make the world safer for all by encouraging the use of self-driving cars. Given the critiques of using an Ethical Egoist approach, I discover exceptions and caveats that ought to be implemented. For example, the counter-argument to Utilitarianism only holds so long as the collective good of autonomous vehicles truly outweighs the potential harm of the accident. Whether it is when 10 lives are endangered, or 50, or 100, there ought to be some point where the innocent lives simply outweigh any possible benefit of selfishness, and an exception to the Ethical Egoist stance must be made. Furthermore, to truly respond to the Deontology critique, 42

Ethics we must respect the dignity of all humans. Thus, we must add the caveat of full transparency. It would be deceptive and immoral to withhold the programmed behavior of the car; while they ought to be selfish, society ought to know how their decisions are made. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, an Ethical Egoist, selfish approach to programming self-driving cars would make roads safer. Not only would it eliminate the possibility of meaningless deaths, doing so would also encourage their use and the vigilance of pedestrians, which are both beneficial to safety. However, a Utilitarian would make a strong argument for the case where many lives are in danger, so we must make an exception when the disaster would far outweigh any potential gain. Deontologists would also advocate for people’s autonomy, which would lead us to ensure that the behavior of the autonomous vehicles are completely transparent. All in all, a generally Ethical Egoist approach would serve society best, so long as decisions and exceptions are made with the people’s best interest in mind. Works Cited Boss, Judith A. Ethics for Life: a Text with Readings. New York: McGrawHill, 2014. Gates, Guilbert, Kevin Granville, John Markoff, Karl Russell, and Anjali Singhvi. “The Race for Self-Driving Cars.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 Dec. 2016. Web. 29 May 2017. “Human error as a cause of vehicle crashes.” Center for Internet and Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2017. Korosec, Kirsten. “2016 Was the Deadliest Year on American Roads in Nearly a Decade.” U.S. Traffic Deaths Jump to Make 2016 Deadliest on Roads Since 2007 | Fortune.com. Fortune, 15 Feb. 2017. Web. 29 May 2017. Lubin, Gus. “Self-driving cars are already deciding who to kill.” Business Insider. Business Insider, 29 Dec. 2016. Web. 29 May 2017. Marino, Gordon Daniel. Ethics: the essential writings. New York: Modern Library, 2010. Titcomb, James. “Google’s driverless cars have needed hundreds of human interventions to stop accidents and failures.” The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 13 Jan. 2016. Web. 29 May 2017.

More Than Abortions: Why Planned Parenthood Needs Funding Skye Urbach ’19 In the political world today with Trump as president, a popular topic of conversation is the funding of Planned Parenthood, a clinic that provides, among many things, contraception resources, sexual education, family planning, and many small medical procedures, including abortions. The news has been flooding with an entire spectrum of opinions in response to Trump’s newest bill affirming that individual states can decide whether or not to fund Planned Parenthood. His bill has made the ongoing debate more urgent than ever because many women, men, and children are scared to lose the care that Planned Parenthood provides for low income families. Seeing as this bill is causing a large amount of distress among those who rely on Planned Parenthood services, Utilitarianism, an ethical system that focuses on the greatest good for the greatest amount of people, would argue that defunding the clinics would not be the right action as it causes more pain than happiness. Although one could argue that the government should not fund Planned Parenthood based on the organization’s connection to abortions, cutting off Planned Parenthood completely would keep them from providing the services which give the necessary care and sexual protection that is crucial for women, men, and children in the world today, suggesting that the benefits towards public health outweigh the small proportion of abortion services Planned Parenthood performs. On the Planned Parenthood official website, they describe themselves as the nation’s leading provider of high quality healthcare to low income families and their services as “prevention including STD testing and treatment, contraception, and accompanying health care, education, and information” (Services, Planned Parenthood). According to their statistics, only 3 percent of their total services are abortions, performing about 323,999 abortions in one year. While this is a large number in itself, they claim to have prevented 579,000 pregnancies on average, and they provide many more cancer screenings and contraception materials than they do abortions (By the Numbers, Planned Parenthood). Recently, Trump passed a new law that says states have the right to withhold funds from Planned Parenthood and any other abortion clinics under Title X after 44

Ethics Obama had tried to protect these funds (Dwyer, Trump Signs Law Giving States Option To Deny Funding For Planned Parenthood). Title X is the government funding that goes toward family planning and preventative care. An older law that is in place is called the Hyde Amendment, which says that the government cannot provide medicaid assistance for abortion services. Right now, not everyone has health care in the United States, which means clinics like these are crucial for keeping low income families healthy and making sure children are getting care they need while growing up. Overall, the organization does much more than abortions and that cannot be forgotten. It is wrong to defund Planned Parenthood because it is {that would} promoting more unhappiness and unhealthy sexual relationships, which could lower the standards of care in parts of the United States. According to Utilitarianism and John Stuart Mill, “if the consequences of a particular action or policy are, on the whole, beneficial and produce more happiness than harm, then that action or policy is morally acceptable,” seeing as “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (Boss 234) (Marino 229). When Trump passed his new law, 14,600 women lost care in the state of Iowa alone after four health centers were forced to close because the state was not providing funding anymore (Todd, New Law Forces Closing of 4 Iowa Planned Parenthood Health Centers). The loss of care for these women leaves them helpless, suggesting that the defunding of Planned Parenthood cannot be a morally sound policy because it is causing more unhappiness. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood calculates that they help about 4,970,000 people in just one year (By the Numbers, Planned Parenthood). Thus, defunding Planned Parenthood would keep the doctors and volunteers from helping these people find the guidance and care they need that they otherwise may not have access too, which would cause more unhappiness within communities, suggesting that the idea of greater happiness is superior because it will foster a healthier population of the United States. Furthermore, although it is fair to disagree with abortions, closing Planned Parenthood facilities will cause women in desperate situations to use unsafe measures to perform abortions at home, which ultimately causes more harm and produces more unhappiness than receiving a safe abortion. As much as pro-lifers would love to keep anyone from getting an abortion, they simply cannot control everything. Additionally, without this provider of care, the standard of health, especially reproductive health, would decline, ultimately helping no one. Overall, 45

the policy that says each state can decide to defund Planned Parenthood produces more harm than good, suggesting that it is morally incorrect to not fund Planned Parenthood. Critics would argue against the funding of Planned Parenthood, claiming that it is unfair to force someone to indirectly fund abortions, that the 3 percent calculation that Planned Parenthood has for their amount of abortions is faulted, and that Republicans should not have to support a primarily Democratic organization. First, according to Ethical Egoism, people should do what they feel is right for themselves and is in their own best interest. In the case of Planned Parenthood, one could argue that asking the government to fund Planned Parenthood is forcing people to indirectly support abortion services by supporting an organization that provides them, and therefore that it is not okay to ask people to use their tax dollars for Planned Parenthood if for example their religion forbids it. Second, one might argue that â&#x20AC;&#x153;the 3 percent figure is derived by counting abortion as just another service like much less consequential services,â&#x20AC;? such as condom supply and other contraception services, suggesting that 3 percent is not representing the extent of abortion services provided because it is being compared to services it cannot be compared to (Presigiacomo, 5 Reasons Planned Parenthood Must Be Defunded ASAP). Third, a pro-life Republican would claim that they should not have to support Planned Parenthood because the organization supports Democratic campaigns by nature (Presigiacomo, 5 Reasons Planned Parenthood Must Be Defunded ASAP). Overall, the main arguments against Planned Parenthood revolve around itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s supply of abortions, which is what makes the organization so controversial. Although critics make strong arguments against Planned Parenthood, their arguments do not hold up against the facts of reality. When women lose the ability to obtain contraception materials which they are unable to afford or that are not covered without insurance, their chances of getting unexpectedly pregnant increase, which ultimately makes the need for abortions higher than before, working in the opposite direction that pro-lifers would like to move. Thus, while you may be indirectly funding abortions, you are also allowing access to materials that allow men and women to stay out of a desperate situation where they feel abortions could be their only option, suggesting that by defunding Planned Parenthood you are also prompting more need for them. Furthermore, based on previous court cases addressing the indirect funding of religious institutions such as Everson v. Board of Education, religious education being something that the government is not supposed to fund based on 46

Ethics the separation of the church and state, it is not a sufficient argument to say that you are indirectly funding abortions just by funding Planned Parenthood. In this case, it was ruled the state’s responsibility to provide busing to religious schools even though this meant it freed up money for the schools to use in supporting their religious programs, because the larger goal is to protect children and support education in general, just as the larger goal of Planned Parenthood is to protect the sexual health and wellbeing of everyone (Boston, Government Aid And Religious Schools). Thus, just because Planned Parenthood provides abortions like religious schools provide religious education, it does not mean the government should not be funding it for it’s greater benefits. Finally, women’s health should not be a political issue like it has become. The only reason it has become one is because the Republican party has been cracking down on Planned Parenthood and making it impossible for them to do what they do for as long as we can remember. Thus, how could Planned Parenthood not support the Democratic party, when Democratic politicians are the ones who are going to be supporting them instead of putting up obstacles in front of them. Although I believe that the funding of Planned Parenthood should not be chalked up to its relation to abortions, this is not an idea that everyone can get behind. Instead of fighting Trump’s organization, I suggest that we try to have a compromise to make a clearer separation between Planned Parenthood abortions and all other Planned Parenthood services because I believe this is a plan that everyone can get behind. For example, Planned Parenthood would agree that they would not use any of the money that is given to them from the government to fund abortions in anyway. This means not paying the doctors who perform abortions and not purchasing materials used for abortions with this money. While I believe that every women should have the right to choose, I think it is more important that Planned Parenthood not be cut off altogether for the greater good of the communities and families around the world who Planned Parenthood has helped and will continue to help. If this means making abortions less funded, then it is worth it to sacrifice so little of what Planned Parenthood does as opposed to shutting them down all together. Essentially, we need to make a compromise that allows Planned Parenthood to be funded in order to continue serving communities and making them a healthier and happier place, while still satisfying those who are pro-life, because arguing for abortion is a much bigger fight that will not be solved in the near future. In the meantime, what is most important is that people who 47

rely on Planned Parenthood do not lose care. Ultimately, my argument is centered around the fact that it is causing more harm than good when Planned Parenthood is not funded, and that therefore, the Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s policy is not an acceptable policy based on Utilitarianism standards. As explained above, thousands of women, men, and children will lose care and this will ultimately cause the standard of health in the United States to decline, and will also provide more opportunity for unplanned pregnancy. This being said, critics would have three main critiques of funding Planned Parenthood: First, that it is unfair to use pro-life tax dollars to fund an organization that provides abortions; second, that it is incorrect to say that only 3 percent of services are abortions because this is only true if you consider an abortion to be equal to handing out condoms; third, that Republicans should not have to pay taxes that go to a Democratic supporting organization. While these arguments seem detrimental to my stance at first glance, after deeper thought and investigation it is clear that they are simple minded and do not look at the big picture of the situation. Thus, even though abortions are a controversial issue in the world today, defunding Planned Parenthood ultimately does not solve the problems pro-lifers had hoped to solve with the new bill and in reality has many more downsides than benefits for the greater good, suggesting that Planned Parenthood should be funded in order to protect the well-being of the families in need and to promote the most good for the most people.

Ethics Works Cited Boss, Judith A. Ethics for Life: A Text with Readings. 6th ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, 2014. Boston, Rob. “Government Aid And Religious Schools.” Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Nov. 2001, www.au.org/ church-state/november-2001-church-state/featured/governmentaid-and-religious-schools. Accessed 28 May 2017. “By The Numbers.” Planned Parenthood, Planned ParenthoodFederation of America, Feb. 2016, www.plannedparenthood.org/ files/5414/5678/8221/PP_Numbers.pdf. Accessed 24 May 2017. Dwyer, Colin. “Trump Signs Law Giving States Option To Deny Funding For Planned Parenthood.” National Public Radio, NPR, 13 Apr. 2017, www.npr.org/sections/thetwoway/2017/04/13/523795052/trump-signs-law-giving-states-option-to-deny-funding-for-planned-parenthood. Accessed 29 May 2017. Marino, Gordon Daniel. Ethics: The Essential Writings. New York, Modern Library, 2010. Presigiacomo, Amanda. “5 Reasons Planned Parenthood Must Be Defunded ASAP.” The Daily Wire, Daily Wire, 6 Jan. 2017, www. dailywire.com/news/12178/4-main-reasons-planned-parenthood-needs-be-amanda-prestigiacomo. Accessed 28 May 2017. “Services.” Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, July 2016, www.plannedparenthood.org/ uploads/filer_public/1d/eb/1deb39ed-b7b7-41a6-a3646b558f84d650/20160711_fs_services_d2.pdf. Accessed 24 May 2017. Todd, Bridget. “New Law Forces Closing of 4 Iowa Planned Parenthood Health Centers.” Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, 18 May 2017, www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/ blog/new-law-forces-closing-of-4-iowa-planned-parenthoodhealth-centers. Accessed 28 May 2017.

Race as Merit in Affirmative Action Admissions Alan Lin ’18 As the era of Jim Crow moves further away in American history, many in the United States have become less, rather than more, supportive of affirmative action policies. Such disapproval of affirmative action has grown especially heated in the area of college admissions, where the potential impact of universities’ decisions on students’ future lives and livelihoods prompts a perennial question: is affirmative action truly fair? Whether the answer is yes or no, whatever answer might prevail would have far-reaching consequences. It would affect the credibility of universities, of individuals who have benefited from affirmative action, and of the college acceptance or rejection letters sent to students every year. A prime example of the debate over universities’ affirmative action policies is the case of Abigail Noel Fisher, who sued the University of Texas for admissions policies which allegedly discriminated against her. The philosopher Kai C. Wong provides one way of justifying affirmative action in response to these allegations. Wong proposes a framework which allows us to explain affirmative action as justified discrimination against white students, based on the ties that every white student has to the harm inflicted by the white race on marginalized races. But Wong’s conception of affirmative action, and others like it, presents a moral (and legal) problem: it blatantly advocates for a form of discrimination. To many, discrimination simply cannot be tolerated. Explaining affirmative action this way opens the door to arguments, such as those already presented in Abigail Fisher’s case, that affirmative action is a “twin evil” equivalent to Jim Crow laws, and color-blind policies must be adopted instead (Hannah-Jones). If affirmative action is to stand, a different understanding is needed, such as the one provided by University of North Carolina professor Bernard Boxill in his 1984 article “The ColorBlind Principle.” In it, he presents a rebuttal to the “color-blind principle,” defending color-conscious policies as recognizing that race may function as merit that we may recognize just as we recognize talents (Boxill 293). Although Kai Wong delineates a viable framework for assigning collective responsibility, cases like Abigail Fisher’s demonstrate that Wong’s framework fails to convincingly assuage claims of “reverse discrimination,” therefore we should redefine affirmative action not as an act of reparations but as a recognition of the undervalued merit of race towards a mission of diversity. 50

Applied Ethics Before moving further, let us expand on Wong’s and Boxill’s frameworks of affirmative action. Wong first establishes how he believes dissimilar individuals may be grouped into a communities based on overlapping characteristics. Essentially, although the members of a group may not all share the same characteristics, they may be defined as a community because they all share a network of similarities or “family of resemblances” (Wong 258259). Thus, even though the community consisting of all white people contains vast internal disparities, it can still be defined as a community. Wong then describes his framework for collective responsibility, which defines two specific norms for assigning responsibility to individuals based on membership in a community. The first norm states, “Given that X and Y belong to… the same community, the more X shares with Y the harmcausing or blameworthy qualities, i.e., morally objectionable intentions, attitudes, decisions, actions, ends, values, and practices, the more X shares responsibility for… the harm caused by Y” (Wong 260). The second norm is identical, except it provides that one may bear responsibility even if one shares harm-causing or blameworthy qualities “through indirect connections.” Put in practical terms, a white student could be grouped as a member of a larger group—the white race—which bears collective responsibility, and because the student has relations to the group, the student may share responsibility for harm inflicted by the group. Additionally, Wong acknowledges the commonly-held belief that “later generations cannot go back in time to hurt the victims of departed generations,” and adds that “responsibility in this sense is not causal, but has to do with a response or a failure to respond to some harm already done” (260). Under the specific terms of this framework, a white student can be said to share, even through indirect connections to others’ blameworthy qualities, the collective responsibility of the harm inflicted by whites on blacks in the past and in the present. Wong does not specify what action should be taken to impose this responsibility, but his framework certainly lends itself to a conception of affirmative action as a way of implementing the collective responsibility he describes. His ideas seem to fit closest with Kantian deontology: he identifies wrongdoing and argues for a responsibility or duty that accompanies the wrongdoing. Assuming that duty is construed to mean white people have a duty to provide reparations of some form in order to correct a past wrong or compensate for present disadvantage, then Wong’s framework fits the definition of affirmative action opposed by Abigail Fisher. Bernard Boxill’s argument also merits more clear definitions. Boxill does 51

not endorse affirmative action per se but instead argues to defend colorconscious policy, or “policy that is designed to treat people differently because of their race” (Boxill 290). He first points out that we allow institutions to consider talent, experience, or other merits in a college or job application. Then, Boxill argues that race may function as such a merit. For example, race acts a merit for a black doctor who may interact with a black community better than a white doctor (Boxill 291). In this sense Boxill could be said to be arguing from a utilitarian standpoint which values the principles that maximize function and well-being of society. But it could also be said that the black doctor’s race does not necessarily make him a better doctor, but rather his community defines his race as a merit. The idea of “race-as-merit” could function better in an Aristotelian virtue ethics system, as it recognizes that race may function as merit whenever it furthers a defined telos or mission of society. I will define race-as-merit this way. Now, having defined Wong’s framework as supporting the notion of affirmative action as an act of reparations, and Boxill’s notion of race-asmerit, we have all the tools to redefine affirmative action as desired. Next, let us clarify the details of Abigail Fisher’s lawsuit. In 2008, Fisher was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin (UT). She subsequently sued UT, and her case reached the Supreme Court. At the core of the case was the claim that UT, and all universities which consider race as a factor in their admissions, commit an injustice by discriminating against white students in favor of black or Latino students, as a form of reparations or compensation that the latter face or have faced. This is a common view of affirmative action. Many who support affirmative action unabashedly 52

Applied Ethics accept the above definition of affirmative action and the label of “reverse discrimination” that it is given, because they believe it is justified even if it is not, by outward appearances, egalitarian. Wong’s framework supports this view. However, it is unnecessary to characterize affirmative action as reverse discrimination, or to justify discrimination at all. To resolve Abigail Fisher’s allegation that affirmative action is a reversediscriminatory, corrective act, our understanding of affirmative action should move away from the framework of justifying affirmative action used by Wong, and instead adopt Boxill’s notion of race-as-merit. I believe we should redefine affirmative action in college admissions in two fundamental ways. First, we should recognize that there is value in diversity in a college, and applicants’ race may contribute to diversity. Thus race can function as a merit that admissions officers may consider and assign value to. Second, it follows that the adverse effects felt by members of races who are judged not to contribute to the school’s diversity are not the intent of affirmative action policy, but instead are a secondary effect. Why is this definition desirable? For one, it moves away from the notion that affirmative action is making amends for past injustices that present-day individuals cannot logically be held responsible for. Even if we define affirmative action as a corrective that provides compensation for harm that disadvantaged students experience today, we still fail to assuage complaints that affirmative action is essentially fighting fire with fire: actively discriminating against white students in order to compensate for discrimination faced by others. This conception of affirmative action also addresses Abigail Fisher’s main grievance. Fisher and many others who have been denied admission to institutions that are known to use affirmative action policies believe that the applicants who benefitted from affirmative action gained an unfair advantage. Though she was not a particularly impressive applicant, she still believed it was unfair for students with a less impressive academic portfolio to be accepted with their race as an advantage, as part of a policy which attempts to correct something she believes she had nothing to do with (Hannah-Jones). Even if Fisher were able to accept Wong’s proposal that white students may share blameworthy characteristics with whites who are responsible for harm, and therefore share the responsibility for righting those wrongs, she would unlikely to be swayed—partly because it is difficult to imagine that the small ways most people contribute to blameworthy characteristics can possibly warrant punishment in the form of weighty admissions decision. The flaw in Wong’s argument becomes clear if we abandon Fisher for the moment and imagine a nearly identical student. 53

This student is also white and has a similar academic profile, except she is deeply involved with efforts to improve the circumstances of disadvantaged children in black communities. She cannot possibly be said to share harmcausing qualities that other members of her race exhibit. How could it be fair to apply affirmative action policies that disadvantage her? It is not fair to do so, but it could be fair if we accept that affirmative action policies are favoring black students not to fulfill a responsibility to provide recompense to them, but because their race contributes genuine value. The same way that a university would value a student’s artistic abilities because their art contributes to the goal of the school for rich artistic diversity, a university may value race because accounting for race allows for the diverse student body that the school values. It is hardly disputable that learning in a more diverse environment is essential to the skills that most colleges seek to foster. Affirmative action need not revolve around the idea of correcting past wrongs, but instead around the idea that race has genuine value toward a greater mission of diversity, and defining race as merit in this way in college admissions already fits many universities’ mission for diversity.. Most universities state that a diverse student body and a collective diversity of experience is a primary goal. According to the President of the University of Pennsylvania Amy Gutmann,“Diversity is not only a public good—it is also very good for Penn. Our quest for eminence depends on great minds that represent a wide array of perspectives and backgrounds” (“Penn Diversity”). The University of Massachusetts Amherst dedicates a separate mission statement to diversity: “We believe that a culturally diverse campus is integral to academic excellence and that our students, faculty, and staff should reflect the diverse world in which we live” (“UMassAmherst: Diversity Matters”). By stating that they value diversity, these universities also implicitly state that in admissions decisions they value race, in the sense that an applicant’s race may contribute to the university’s goal of having a diverse student body. Why should blackness be valued, and not whiteness? We shall prohibit claims that blackness is inherently more valuable than whiteness. Rather, we acknowledge that blacks are underrepresented on university campuses and therefore typically benefit from diversity-based policy. Kai Wong would present an objection to my description of the facts so far: he would say that people like Fisher do not have “nothing” to do with the harm that he claims justifies our assigning of responsibility on white college applicants. In fact, we may determine roughly how responsible any 54

Applied Ethics given person is for harm done to victims of discrimination. A student who is not responsible at all should be given an exception and not disadvantaged by race. Then, we should assign responsibility based strictly on the degree of harm one has contributed. But this understanding itself borders on absurdity: imagine applying affirmative action by more harshly disadvantaging students according to how racist they are. Doing so expressly discriminates based on one’s beliefs, which would be intolerable. Amy Gutmann presents a separate criticism of affirmative action, arguing that we also consider class as a factor in admissions. If a school values racial diversity, Gutmann argues, it must also recognize diversity of economic background as a potential merit. The two need not necessarily be mutually exclusive; Gutmann urges both be used as “independently important considerations in university admissions” (Gutmann 284). To remain true to the principle of a merit-based, rather than a debt-based, conception of affirmative action, the policy must conceivably allow a white student to gain admission over a black student because of his economic background under the claim that the white student will be able to provide a diversity of experience that the other student will not. Another objection might come from Shelby Steele, who argues in his article “The Price of Preference” that affirmative action may “bestow on” middle-class black children “an undeserved advantage while neglecting the development of those disadvantaged children… who will likely never be in a position to benefit from a preference” (Steele 281). In the context of college admissions, might a middle-class black applicant be able to benefit from color-conscious policy when he or she may not contribute to the goal of diversity as greatly as another candidate? Should not colleges use a holistic, race-neutral approach like the one suggested by Supreme Court Justice Alito in his dissent of the 2016 Supreme Court case, Fisher v. University of Texas (Fisher v. University of Texas)? Would not a holistic approach more reasonably account for the nuanced differences between candidates? I would respond that we should indeed use a more detailed method of assessing applicants wherever possible, by relying on admissions essays rather than the mere status of race. However, from a practical standpoint, universities also need signifiers such as race. If, for example, the University of Texas names diversity as a stated goal, and more specifically wishes to reflect in its student body the same demographic and percentage of black students as Texas’ black residents, then the university is within its rights to use race as a justification for achieving the state goal of diversity. I would adjust the principle to require universities to more explicitly state its mis55

sion and goal of diversity. For example, a university might state it intends to achieve diversity in the areas of gender, race, and religion. Then it would be able to consider any of those three factors in admitting students. Or, a school might state that it considers only racial diversity and not the other two factors. The purpose of this stipulation is to require universities to be consistent with their stated goals. In a virtue ethics system, merits may be defined with reference to a subjective ideal, but the ideal must be defined. The same applies to universities. However, what about Steele’s claim that affirmative action in college admissions fails to address the real and actual issues faced by the disadvantaged, because it focuses on the self-serving goals of universities? I concede that this conception of affirmative action fails to provide a great deal of help that is needed. But universities are not designed to be the sole engines of change, and no applicant is entitled to admission into university. Colleges reserve the discretion to define their missions and the merits that will help one be admitted. We should work towards helping the disadvantaged based on the principle of equal protection of the law and equal opportunity, not as an act of reparations or enforcing responsibility. Abigail Fisher’s case appeared to condemn affirmative action as it was understood by Kai Wong. However, Wong’s framework could be adjusted to show that affirmative action is not intended to cause “reverse discrimination” and in fact any adverse effects are secondary to the primary goal of acknowledging genuine merit in one’s race. This formulation should be adjusted to also consider economic diversity. Also, in order to ensure consistency and transparency, universities should be explicitly clear with their stated missions and the kind of diversity they are seeking to achieve. Although Kai Wong’s framework failed to address the complaints posed by cases like Abigail Fisher’s, implementing Bernard Boxill’s notion of considering race as merit allowed the definition of affirmative action as a corrective act to be replaced with a definition based on the value of race towards the goal of diversity.

Works Cited 56

Applied Ethics Boxill, Bernard. “The Color-Blind Principle.” 1984. Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Approach, edited by Larry May and Jill B. Delston, Sixth ed., New York, Routledge, 2016. Davis, Michael. “Race as Merit.” Mind, vol. 92, no. 367, 1983, pp. 347– 367. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2253811. Fisher v. University of Texas. Oyez, 7 Nov. 2017, www.oyez.org/cas es/2015/14-981. Gutmann, Amy. “Should Public Policy Be Class Conscious Rather than Color Conscious?.” 2012. Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Ap proach, edited by Larry May and Jill B. Delston, Sixth ed., New York, Routledge, 2016. Hannah-Jones, Nikole. “What Abigail Fisher’s Affirmative Action Case Was Really About.” ProPublica, June 2016, www.propublica.org/ article/a-colorblind-constitution-what-abigail-fishers-affirmative- action-case-is-r. Accessed 7 Nov. 2017. “Penn Diversity.” Diversity at UPenn, diversity.upenn.edu/. Steele, Shelby. “Affirmative Action: The Price of Preference.” 1990. Ap plied Ethics: A Multicultural Approach, edited by Larry May and Jill B. Delston, Sixth ed., New York, Routledge, 2016. “UMassAmherst: Diversity Matters.” UMassAmherst, www.umass.edu/ diversity/about. Wong, Kai. “Collective Responsibility and Multiple Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Identities.” 2011. Applied Ethics: A Multicultural Ap proach, edited by Larry May and Jill B. Delston, Sixth ed., New York, Routledge, 2016.

Communist Contradictions Justin Wong ’18 Karl Marx has long been remembered for his historical materialism and his vision of communism. A strong critic of the Hegelian dialectic and the exploitative capitalist superstructure, Marx employs a historical materialist approach to criticise the failings of capitalism and reinforce his campaign for a communist uprising. This materialist critique of capitalist society exposes the recurring exploitation of workers and argues that the material conditions produced by capitalism will dictate its internal collapse and the subsequent rise of communism. Yet, Marx’s materialist premise limits the possibility of communism as communism can then only function in opposition to an existent capitalist society. Once outside of the pre-existing setting, communism ceases to be a material opposition against a material society and becomes an ideological and utopian fantasy, suggesting that, in a broader sense, Marx’s insistence in effecting change outside of the system is also inherently flawed for its reliance on the nonmaterial. As a result, the only materialist path for improvement is to follow Adorno’s negative dialectic without an overarching end goal. Criticising the previous Hegelian dialectic for altering reality based on ideology, Marx advocates for a dialectic rooted in the material reality – a historical materialist perspective. In his criticism of the Hegelian dialectic, Marx argues that Hegel, in his reliance on theses and antitheses, has failed to account for material conditions by confusing ideology and material and inverting their relative importance. In his Contribution to the Critique, Marx rebukes Hegel for transforming family and civil society from “actual components” into an “internal imaginary activity” (Marx 17,16). Instead of explaining the material relations between family and society, Hegel transforms the abstract idea of a state into a subject, and, on the other hand, subjugates real, independent objects as “element of the mystical substance [the state]” (18). Marx believes that reality is only affected by “the actual nature of the actual finite, i.e., of what exists and is determinate,” and, as a result, reality can only be understood in terms of the material, an important aspect that contradicts the Hegelian dialectic (18). In order to correct Hegel’s flawed notions of material and ideology, Marx demonstrates the relative importance of tangible materials and introduces historical materialism as an alternative dialectic. Observing that the actual, material “relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, on which 58

Makers of the Modern Mind rises a legal and political superstructure,” Marx asserts that material forms the basis for ideas, implying that material is of more importance (4). And because of the relative importance of material conditions, Marx further claims that in any analysis or prediction, material conditions should take precedence over ideological explanations or interpretations. Unlike Hegel’s approach, in which objects are reshaped into ideas and their material impacts are neglected, Marx’s historical materialism analyzes society in terms of the existing reality and its tangible significances. By living in capitalism, Marx observes the workings and failings of contemporary society and condemns it for a self-perpetuating cycle of exploitation of the proletariat. Describing material production and relations between classes, Marx’s criticism of capitalism is therefore backed with material evidence and fulfills his historical materialist premise. After giving a clear and physical definition of capital – “a sum of commodities, of exchange values” – Marx demonstrates how the power of commodities and values dominates over wage labour for its own maintenance and propagation (208). Using the concrete example of a worker in a cotton factory, Marx argues that the worker is forced to produce in the factory because the bourgeois owners of capital have, in their hands, the power of “accumulated, past, materialised labour” (208). To survive in this capitalist society, the worker must therefore toil in the factory “in exchange for means of subsistence,” for the meager wage that would keep him working until the next paycheck (209). But as the worker concedes to the established power of capital, he is further strengthening capital by producing capital. Empowered by the worker’s production of capital, the bourgeois then calls into existence more workers, who would compete to produce even more capital at even lower wages (211, 215). Therefore, in Marx’s historical materialist critique, the proletariat is, in material terms, sinking into an abyss of reliance and lack of material as it is “systematic[ally] [robbed] of what is necessary for life” (216). And although one may disagree with Marx’s conclusions, it is still undeniable that his critique is solidly grounded in the material conditions of the proletariat and its relation with capital and the bourgeois. After describing the flaws of capitalism, Marx continues to predict its inevitable internal collapse and replacement by a communist society. His prediction includes two distinct nuances—the former system’s collapse and the subsequent system’s rise—both of which are set in the future. However, the fact that both will happen in future does not automatically render them as ideology: While Marx explains the collapse in terms of material conditions, his communist replacement smacks of ideology and violates his 59

historical materialist premise. Instead of focusing on how material conditions after the fall of capitalism result in the creation of a new society, Marx dictates how a new society should be created according to a predetermined model, and communism thus ceases to be materialistic. In Marx’s description of the fall of capitalism, he provides material evidence that qualifies his argument: Marx observed that capitalism is producing the materials that would cause its disintegration. Although the efficiency and productiveness of capitalism have bolstered its growth, Marx argued that everything is spiralling out of control, as “there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce” (478). Since capital endlessly drives the further production of capital, society eventually reaches a threshold where there is simply too much capital, and the “productive forces at disposal… [would] bring disorder” in the form of overproduction, bringing an end to capitalism (478). However, Marx’s solution to the collapse of capitalism – a communist uprising – leaves the realm of reality by forcing reality to conform with ideology. Based on a materialist premise, Marx’s communism is strong because of its inevitability: Marx argues that material conditions will dictate the fall of capitalism, and there is no ideology that could withstand the overriding force of materialism. Nonetheless, although Marx introduces his second nuance with the materialist premise that communism is “in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered… [but are purely] express[ing], in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle,” his ultimate plan

Makers of the Modern Mind for communism runs counter to this premise (484). Unlike his critique of capitalism or prediction of its fall, Marx’s proposal for communism is set in a utopian future that exists both independent of and disregarding the existing material world, and Marx therefore fails to provide any material evidence that would support a materialist perspective. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx argues for the realization of communism in a stand-alone society, but fails to understand that communism can only exist in opposition to the existing system of capitalism. Marx believes in a “radical rupture with traditional property relations,” in which the old capitalist system is completely abandoned and a new communist society emerges from the shadow of its destruction (489). Yet this belief necessitates that his “new communist society” is created radically different from and independent of the existing world. Therefore, Marx’s new communist society, by definition, cannot possibly be based on material conditions. This contradiction between Marx’s historical materialism and communism is further exposed in Marx’s attempt to give some tangible form to communism. In Marx’s outline for the rise of communism, he lists ten generally applicable measures, each of which a material solution to the problems of capitalism and a step towards communism (490). However, these communist changes to the capitalist system can only act in opposition to an existing reality from which it derive its material basis. Consequently, these descriptions all relate to the transition stage between capitalism and communism, and only serve to demonstrate the impossibility of a communism outside of capitalism. Therefore, Marx’s materialist premise cannot stand together with his vision of communism. In fact, the only description of communism in the Communist Manifesto – “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” – reeks even more heavily of ideology, further demonstrating that communism cannot be, as Marx envisioned, a final goal for society (491). In addition to arguing for a communism independent of existing material conditions, Marx strives for a communism that can adapt to any conditions, a flawed argument that claims communism can exist disregarding material conditions. In order to extend the range of communism, Marx argues that communism works for the “common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality,” that communism would be “different in different countries,” and that communist society can adapt to the contexts of any environment (484, 490). Although this statement significantly increases the international relevance of communism, Marx’s claim that communism is adaptable renders communism into nothing 61

more than a versatile ideology. According to Marx’s historical materialist perspective, any transformations in society can only be explained “from the contradictions of material life, [and] the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production” (13). This requirement is fulfilled in his prediction of for the fall of capitalism, but when Marx argues that communism can occur regardless of the different material contexts, he abandons the principle of historical materialism. While Marx’s material world is fixed and functions according to its material relations, his vision of communism, on the contrary, is given the elusive power of changing to suit different environments. This contradiction demonstrates that communism could not be based on the material, and is thus only an idea that transcends and disregards material conditions. As a result, in Marx’s attempt to implement a predetermined future communist society, he leaves the realm of material, where he joins his despised Hegel in forcing reality to conform with ideology. Consequently, Marx’s communism is no longer a looming reality destined to happen because of the material conditions in a capitalist society, but is just an ideology that its advocates try to shape reality with. In a broader sense, because only an existing society can provide material evidence, Marx’s theory of effecting change outside of the system is equally flawed. Marx argued that the bourgeois has “conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway,” and, as a result, has controlled the economic and political powers of the entire capitalist system (475). This cynical view of the capitalist society led Marx to further argue that any substantial change could only be initiated from the outside after the current system collapses. As a result, Marx targets socialism and socialist reforms such as the Factory Acts and Sanitary and Educational Clauses for being too mild and meagre to make any difference, arguing that meaningful change lies in the hope of a crash and reset (411). In this broader context of Marx’s beliefs, communism is a measure that can reset the system after capitalism crashes. However, similar to the fact that Marx’s communism is independent of and disregards material, his hopes for initiating changes from the outside through a crash and reset is also inherently flawed for relying on the nonmaterial. In view of such irreconcilable contradictions between historical materialism and Marx’s vision for communism, one must look for material alternatives to tackle the failings of society. Within this context, Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics provides a neo-Marxist dialectic that falls back on Marx’s materialist perspective, but stops short of asserting an ul62

Makers of the Modern Mind timate communism. Earlier in Marx’s life, before turning to communism, he argues that criticism is the only way to “find the new world” without “attempt[ing] dogmatically to prefigure the future” (13). Unlike his later hopes for a communist society, Marx does not predetermine an ultimate goal, and believes in making progress through criticising the current material world. Agreeing that the current material world is always and undeniably flawed, Adorno picks up from Marx’s materialist perspective and argues that the “undeniable human suffering” in society propels incremental changes with a “utopian reach” (Zuidervaart). Adorno believes that “suffering is the corporeal imprint of society”: As individuals inevitably suffer, the suffering prompts criticism and improvements to the human condition (Zuidervaart). Yet Adorno believes that if one determines what ideal society resembles, the image automatically becomes an oppressive ideology that bends reality to fulfill itself, deviating from Marx in the nuanced difference between reach and end: While Marx envisions a communist end goal, Adorno campaigns for a non-utopian Marxism that reaches upwards for improvements. Therefore, Adorno’s Negative Dialectic provides a material solution to the wrongs of capitalism in lieu of Marx’s flawed vision of communism. Despite Marx’s intense criticism of Hegel and his belief in historical materialism, Marx, in practice, abandons his dialectic for his vision of communism as a communist utopia independent of and disregarding material conditions.In the process, he renders communism into ideology. In the Communist Manifesto, while describing communism as a spectre haunting Europe, Marx means to poke fun at those using communism in public recourse as a label to ridicule political opponents. However, in Marx’s insistence to initiate change outside of the system (communism being the prominent examples of this principle), Marx ultimately degreades communism into mere ideology – a spectre, if you will. And therefore, only Adorno’s Negative Dialectics can salvage Marx’s notions of materialism while still effecting change in society.

Works Cited Marx, Karl. Capital. 1867. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Robert C. Tucker et al., 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978. ---. Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. 1843. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Robert C. Tucker et al., 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978. ---. For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing. 1844. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Robert C. Tucker et al., 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978. ---. Marx on the History of His Opinions. 1859. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Robert C. Tucker et al., 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978. ---. Wage Labour and Capital. 1849. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Robert C. Tucker et al., 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848. The Marx-Engels Reader, by Robert C. Tucker et al., 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978. Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Theodor W. Adorno.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2015, plato. stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/adorno/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2018.

DARWIN COLLECTION

On the Origin of On the Origin of Species Science Master Johnny Clore H’02 Originally published in 1859, Charles Darwin’s seminal work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, offered scientific explanations for the emergence of life’s diversity and the development of exquisite adaptations seen in the natural world. More specifically, Darwin proposed a mechanism of natural selection, which leads to the “preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious” (Darwin, 2009, p. 146) and “acts by either now adapting the varying parts of each being to its organic and inorganic conditions of life; or by having adapted them during past periods of time” (Darwin, 2009, p. 350). On the basis of this mechanism, Darwin proposed “that fundamental agreement in structure, which we see in organic beings of the same class,... is explained by unity of descent” (Darwin, 2009, p. 350). In other words, the unifying characteristics of living things can be explained by their descent, with modification, from a common ancestor; all the species of the world were not created at once as immutable but instead represent but the “green and budding twigs” (Darwin, 2009, p. 228) on the great tree of life. As he worked to formulate these ideas, Darwin was certainly influenced by religion and philosophy, but ultimately, his thinking was based on science and a scientific approach to understanding the world. Therefore, although The Origin of Species has implications for religion and philosophy, Darwin’s writings represent a body of scientific work and must be understood, applied, and evaluated on the basis of a scientific framework. Charles Darwin was born in 1809, raised in the Christian tradition, and even studied theology for some time, in the hopes of becoming an Anglican clergyman. For him and for many of his contemporaries, Christian theology played an important role in establishing his world view. Indeed, “by the mid-1830s, Darwin is best described as a deist, one who thinks of God as unmoved mover, who, having set the world in motion, now lets all unfurl according to unbroken law” (Ruse, 2009, p. 242). This belief was especially important to Darwin’s thinking about evolution in light of the idea that adaptations are seen by some as a “key factor in the proof of God’s existence. The eye is like a telescope; telescopes have telescope makers; therefore eyes have eye makers” (Ruse, 2009, p. 264). Indeed, as he 66

Darwin Collection

undertook his famous research trip on board the HMS Beagle and as he reflected on his observations from that trip, Darwin espoused this belief but sought “some way in which he could account for adaptation through law. This was why selection proved so important to him, because he could see that it did lead, not just to change, but to change in the direction of features that appeared to be designed” (Ruse, 2009, p. 264). While this quest for an explanatory mechanism was ultimately supported by scientific observation and analysis, it is worth noting that Darwin also took inspiration from the writings of the Anglican clergyman, Thomas Malthus. Malthus contended that the need for space and food could not keep up with human population growth, and that this discrepancy would ultimately lead to “struggles for existence” (Ruse, 2009, p. 10). In reading Malthus’s work, Darwin realized that these struggles also exist in nature, where they may create the pressure for natural selection. In addition to these influences of religious ideas on Darwin’s thinking, Darwin’s ideas have reciprocal implications for religious thinking. More specifically, the ideas of adaptation and speciation through natural selection contradict a literal interpretation of Creation as described in Genesis. Darwin himself seemed acutely aware of this fact but was careful to separate his scientific conclusions from theological ones. Although he provided evidence to undermine the idea of Divinely endowed, immutable traits, he saw the question of adaptation as “wholly distinct from that higher one, 67

whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe; and this has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed” (Darwin, C. as cited in Ruse, 2009, p. 269). Thus, despite their relationship to religious doctrine, The Origin of Species and his later work, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, were written as scientific works, to be evaluated and applied to a scientific understanding of the world. Darwin’s scientific approach to topics with religious implications was mirrored in his approach to philosophical considerations. As Darwin addressed questions on the origins of morality and the definitions of general good, he returned to ideas from the scientific work he had already produced. He saw our moral sensibilities as a product of evolution and defined the general good in terms of maximizing environmental fitness (Ruse, 2009, p. 216). Thus, although Darwin certainly considered philosophical questions, his answers to those questions reveal a devotion to scientific thinking in his analysis of the world around him. Therefore, despite the influences of religious and philosophical thinking on Darwin’s work, his conclusions are fundamentally the result of scientific analysis. Science is a way of understanding the world through systematic observation, experimentation, analysis, and conclusion. In this way, science develops ideas that are supported by evidence, rejects those which evidence refutes, and thereby avoids the pitfalls of dogmatic beliefs and incontrovertible proof. For Darwin, it was this scientific approach that led to many of his most important observations and insights from the study of geology, domestic breeding, and natural species diversity. The influence of geology on Darwin can hardly be overstated. In particular, the writings of geologist Charles Lyell proved to be central in his developing understanding of how a process such as natural selection, working over a long period of time, could give rise to the extraordinary diversity of life on earth today. In his book Principles of Geology, Lyell claimed that “the ordinary everyday processes of nature – rain, snow, freezing, warming, deposition, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, and more – could do everything… Everything, that is, if there were a virtually infinite bank of time on which nature could draw repeatedly” (Ruse, 2009, p. 5). Furthermore, Lyell claimed that “there is nothing in the past that was made by processes that do not still occur in the present” (Ruse, 2009, p. 5). In considering the power of natural selection to give rise to adaptations, speciation, and extinction, Darwin considered that Lyell’s geological principles may well apply to biological change as well. 68

Darwin Collection Building on this understanding of gradual change over geologic time via ongoing processes, Darwin also considered the changes observed through generations of domestic breeding in pigeon populations. Through his investigation into various pigeon breeds, Darwin reached the conclusion that “great as the differences are between the breeds of pigeons, … all have descended from the rock-pigeon” (Darwin, 2009. p. 57). In itself, this conclusion was significant because it suggested that a variety of modern forms could emerge from a single ancestral form. However, Darwin went further to consider how this diversification arose; breeders understood a breed’s characteristics to be “quite plastic,” and by carefully selecting only those birds with desirable traits for breeding, they were able to “model [traits] almost as they please” (Darwin, 2009. p. 68). To Darwin, this direct evidence of diversification from a common ancestor by means of artificial selection was also evidence that natural selection could exert a similar effect in the wild. In the wild, Darwin began by documenting, and reporting on previously documented variability in natural populations. In particular, during his time in the Galapagos Islands, Darwin made numerous observations about the unique distributions and variations among finches, mockingbirds, and tortoises. In particular, he noted the similarities and distinctions between mainland species and those found on the various islands. Eventually, he arrived at the conclusion that the island species had derived from and diverged from the mainland species since travelling to to the islands. The weight of this conclusion was considerable, for it left Darwin “never again to think that species are fixed, for ever to think that life is in flux” (Ruse, 2009, p. 9). Since Darwin first published The Origin of Species, his ideas about natural selection and evolution have been repeatedly tested according to the tenets of a scientific approach. Indeed, even today, researchers continue to make careful observations, design elegant experiments, collect empirical data, and perform rational analysis to test Darwin’s ideas. This research has tracked the evolution of finch beak sizes during droughts and rainy years (Grant & Grant, 2002). It has followed patterns of guppy size and coloration in pools with and without predators (Endler, 1980). It has analyzed structural homologies, genetic homologies, and the deep homologies of pattern formation that underpin the origins of evolutionary novelty (Shupin, Tabin, & Carroll, 2009). In these and countless other studies, the predictions made by natural selection have repeatedly withstood the scrutiny of rigorous scientific analysis, thus contributing to the ever-growing 69

weight of evidence that supports evolution by natural selection as a scientific framework for understanding the natural world. Ultimately, this is the role of Darwin’s work in the world; though influenced by religion and philosophy, it was a product of science, to be interpreted, analyzed, applied and extended by scientists and scientific thinking. When misappropriated by Social Darwinists, his ideas have been used to justify eugenics. When misinterpreted as theology, his ideas have sparked outrage across Christian communities. However, when viewed as science, Darwin’s ideas are clearly aligned with a broad and far-reaching consensus; the diversity of life on earth has arisen via natural selection, which has produced a remarkable array of adaptations that enhance survival and reproduction. Works Cited Darwin, C. (2009). On the origin of species : by means of natural selection. 6th Edition From a 1872 edition. The Floating Press. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com Endler, J. A. (1980). Natural selection on color patterns in Poecilia reticulata. Evolution, 34(1), 76-91. Grant, P. R., & Grant, B. R. (2002). Unpredictable evolution in a 30-year study of Darwin’s finches. science, 296(5568), 707-711. Ruse, M., & Ruse, M. (2009). Charles Darwin. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com Shubin, N., Tabin, C., & Carroll, S. (2009). Deep homology and the origins of evolutionary novelty. Nature, 457(7231), 818.

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Homo syntheticus? Charles Darwin, Artificial Intelligence, and Humanity Alan Lin ’18 Charles Darwin helped initiate a modern era with his influential books on evolution and natural selection, The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. Over 150 years later, the newest modern era is an information age, marked prominently by the advent of artificial intelligence. The term artificial intelligence (AI) generally refers to machines that can exercise cognitive functions associated with humans, such as learning, problem solving, and language, among others (Russell and Norvig, 2). The field of AI research is defined by the proposition that “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it” (McCarthy et al., 12). AI is developing at a rapid pace. Ideas such as a self-driving car or a computerized doctor seem outlandish one day and become realities the next. Much remains to be discovered about AI, but the current trend of development in the field suggests it will not be long before interacting with AI is a part of daily life. Thus, understanding how we might integrate AI into the modern human world—or become integrated into an AI world—is a crucial task. That task begins with connecting the unfamiliar world of AI to modern systems of thought with which we are already familiar, to see if any new insights ensue. Darwin’s theory of natural selection is one such system of thought. Although an advanced AI race would not at first appear to fit Darwin’s original meaning of his theory of natural selection, I will argue that AI obeys the same fundamental principles that Darwin describes for humans and other animals, and should therefore be considered the next evolved form of human beings. Understanding how AI fits into Darwinian ideas requires an understanding of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. In Origin of Species, Darwin begins from the premise of variation, finding examples of empirical evidence in domesticated pigeons. Darwin cites Malthusian population mathematics to define his second premise, the “struggle for existence,” which is his answer to the question of “how is is that varieties… become ultimately converted into good and distinct species?” (Darwin 126). The struggle for existence is the obstacle to survival and reproduction that every life form faces in one way or another. It manifests as competition with other species 71

or members of one’s own species for resources, mating partners, or escaping death. This conflict between a species’ ability to reproduce and its environment’s ability to produce resources provides a mechanisms for those species whose traits allow them to best exploit their niche of their environment, or expand to others’ niches. Darwin further elaborates the reasons why organisms that begin to diverge in character from their relatives continue to diverge. His principle of “divergence of character” explains how unique or more extreme traits are preserved and accumulated due to their increased ability to master new niches in the “polity of nature” (Darwin 124, 130). Thus, “the most distinct varieties of any one species… would always have the best chance of succeeding and of increasing in numbers, and thus of supplanting the less distinct varieties; and varieties, when rendered very distinct from each other, take the rank of species” (Darwin 126). Finally, Darwin clarifies that species do not truly exist in the way they were originally thought to. Diagrams showing a “line of succession,” with individual species at each break in the line are acceptable for conveying the gist of the progression of organisms, so long as it is remembered that “these breaks are imaginary, and might have been inserted anywhere” (Darwin 129). We shall see that the mold of laws of nature laid out by Darwin aligns with past and predicted development of artificial intelligence. AI abides by the same observed principles Darwin uses to describe humans and other animals. Indeed, learning mechanisms of AI have often been modeled after evolutionary mechanisms. In a paper for a 1993 con-

Darwin Collection ference on Computational Learning Theory, John C. Grefenstette of the US Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence describes “genetic algorithms”: Genetic algorithms are heuristic learning models based on principles drawn from natural evolution and selective breeding. Some features that distinguish genetic algorithms from other search methods are: a population of structures that can be interpreted as candidate solutions to the given problem; the competitive selection of structures for reproduction, based on each structure’s fitness as a solution to the given problem; idealized genetic operators that alter the selected structures in order to create new structures for further testing. (Grefenstette 3) Here, each algorithm is analogous to an organism or trait, and the question an algorithm seeks to solve is analogous to Darwin’s “struggle for existence.” The genetic algorithm, constantly testing its population of structures against the problem, assesses them on the basis of parameters that determine its fitness for selection, and adapt the structures of future generations via genetic operators. Grefenstette elaborates on how the design of genetic algorithms mimics nature: “We have found that genetic algorithms provide an efficient way to learn strategies that take advantage of subtle regularities in the behavior of opposing agents. We are now beginning to investigate the more general case in which the behavior of the external agents changes over time. In particular, we are interested in learning competitive strategies against an opponent that is itself a learning agent. This is, of course, the usual situation in natural environments in which multiple species compete for survival. Our initial studies lead us to expect that genetic learning systems can successfully adapt to changing environmental conditions… the range of applications of genetic algorithms continues to grow more rapidly each year” (Grefenstette 4). One grievance with this model might that the “idealized” genetic operators are consciously acting, whereas natural selection involves no intent. However, these genetic operators can be said to be merely fulfilling part of the role of the struggle of existence, facilitating a mechanism in which unfit structures are selected against and the characteristics of fit structures are accumulated according to the principle of divergence of character. In nature these alterations are made by life and death, and the genetic algorithms’ selection/genetic operator loop merely rearranges this process. 73

From the flip side, rather than viewing computing as a Darwinian process, natural selection can be viewed as an algorithmic process, as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett in his book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (Dennett 50). Dennett rephrases Darwin’s fundamental idea, saying, “Life on Earth has been generated over billions of years in a single branching tree—the Tree of Life—by one algorithmic process or another.” Dennett refers to “evolutionary algorithms,” which are simply another formulation of laws identified by Darwin, such as divergence of character, niche diversification, or the processes of many generations of variation (Dennett 51). Both by conceptualizing AI in Darwin’s terms and natural selection in terms of machine intelligence, AI fits the principles of Darwinian evolution. The next premise required to accept AI as the next form of human evolution is how similar AI is and is expected to become to humankind, especially in capacities considered uniquely human. Darwin identifies “the powers of observation, memory, curiosity, imagination, and reason” as the faculties unique to humans that have enabled their dominance. As AI becomes more advanced, examples of AI emulating human capacities abound. IBM’s question-answering computer system “Watson” became famous when it competed on the quiz show Jeopardy against human contestants, and eventually won. Watson was later adopted for use in hospitals for diagnosing and treating patients, where 90% of nurses who use Watson now follow its guidance. (Upbin). Watson provides only information and not the emotional and human capacity of nurses, but AI developers are encroaching on that front too: a broad market of robots capable of mimicking human emotion and social interaction, including robots designed specifically for medical care, already exists (Muoio). Countries with aging populations including the United States, China, and Japan are experiencing a shortage in caregivers for the elderly; intelligent “Carebots” may soon replace humans in elderly care (Markoff). AI even promises the potential to eclipse humans at their own jobs. Scientists are developing ways to combine the design of human mind with the sheer computational power of machinery. In a 2016 study published in Nature, researchers developed a kind of “hybrid computing” which combines artificial neural networks—AI versions of human neural networks that have proven impressive in processing and learning, but limited in their capacity to visualize data structures and to store data over time—with an external memory source, which provided additional computational power. Not unlike plugging a primitive brain into a superpowered computer, the researchers created a “hybrid computer” capable of navigating the London Underground (Graves 471). One does not need 74

Darwin Collection much imagination to foresee how increased computing power will enable AI computers to have faster reflexes and greater “brain” power than humans, like driverless cars which are safer, more fuel-efficient, and faster than the average human driver (Bell). AI is in the process of conquering each of the qualities Darwin stated as human. If and when AI develops these capacities in a form equaling humans’, little will distinguish the two from each other, except how well each one exhibits their shared capacities for learning and reasoning. And if AI becomes the superior of the two forms, would it not, by the logic of Darwin, become the next evolution of humankind? It would become more accurate to call humans an “intermediary species,” Darwin’s term for a species that exists at a moment in time but will yield to a better-adapted one (Darwin 125). This intermediary species will yield to a futuristic AI species or AI-integrated form of humans that is more suited to the environment. Homo sapiens will be replaced by Homo syntheticus. I use the Latin word syntheticus somewhat in jest, but it raises a pertinent question: does the “synthetic” nature of AI disqualify it from following Darwinian science? One objection to the conception of AI as the next evolution of the human race is that AI is non-biological while humans and other animals are natural, and Darwin’s natural selection applies only to living, organic beings. In particular, according to Duke Professor N.K. Hayles, AI cannot be human because it is disembodied. “Information, like humanity, cannot exist apart from the embodiment that brings it into being as a material entity in the world,” writes Hayles. “Embodiment can be destroyed but it cannot be replicated. Once the specific form constituting it is gone, no amount of massaging data will bring it back… As we rush to explore the new vistas that cyberspace has made it available for colonization, let us also remember the fragility of a material world that cannot be replaced” (Taylor 106). In short, if humans and machines were to become indistinguishable, Professor Hayles says, we would lose our humanity and enter a “post-human” condition. Hayles addresses the common fear that AI will prove the end of human beings, but ignores the second possibility: that humans and AI will coexist or even merge. As Mark C. Taylor writes, “It is becoming increasingly obvious that information is, in important ways, material, and matter is informational” (Taylor 106). Indeed, natural traits are passed through genes—which, fundamentally, are a form of information. What distinguishes amino-acid based information from electricitybased information? The fact that the latter is arguably less material than the former is less important than the fact that both mediums are capable 75

of communicating incredibly detailed information. “Neither information nor materiality,” neither humans nor AI, “can be… interpreted in simple oppositional terms,” writes Taylor. Instead, the modern age should divorce itself from terms of dematerialization or abstraction, and instead acknowledge that the nature of information will inevitably grow more ambiguous and more complicated (Taylor 106). Resistance to the suggestion that humans and machines can merge from thinkers such as Hayles is nothing new; I would even argue that the current era of AI is reliving a kind of human-centric bias experienced during Darwin’s time. This bias is a lingering prejudice against notions that suggest humans are not as special or unique as we have believed ourselves to be. As Luciano Floridi wrote in the journal Metaphilosophy in 2008: “...trends suggest that ACs [Artificial Companions] are part of a wide and influential informational turn, a fourth revolution in the long process of reassessing humanity’s fundamental nature and role in the universe. We are not immobile, at the centre of the universe (Copernicus); we are not unnaturally distinct and different from the rest of the animal world (Darwin); and we are far from being entirely transparent to ourselves (Freud). We are now slowly accepting the idea that we might be informational organisms among many agents (Turing), inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, sharing with them a global environment that is ultimately made of information, the infosphere” (Floridi 654). Like Taylor, Floridi envisions the world as fundamentally composed of the common currency of information. Floridi also refers to past revolutions, from Copernicus’ astronomy to Darwin’s evolutionary biology to Freud’s psychology and finally to Turing and the modern age of AI. The four revolutions Floridi lists are linked by a single trend: the dismantling of the idea that humans occupy a central, unique, or important place in the universe. The revolutions also all seemed to have faced similar types of resistance. Just as Copernicus’ ideas were resisted for offending the view, informed by religion, that Man and Earth had a Creator who placed them in the center of the universe, Darwin’s ideas faced opposition for declaring that man is even lowlier. Skipping forward to the present day and future, we can see that the suggestion that AI will eclipse human beings will be the last straw, by demonstrating once and for all that humans are not unique, nor are they even the most dominant life form. Yet this ought not to be a problem. As Daniel Dennett said about Darwin: “perhaps the most common misunderstanding of Darwinism [is] the idea that Darwin showed that evolution by natural selection is a procedure for producing 76

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Us” (emphasis in original). Dennett pinpoints the human psychology that obscures Darwin’s logic, asking rhetorically, “Can [evolution] really be the outcome of nothing but a cascade of algorithmic processes feeding on chance? And if so, who designed that cascade? Nobody… It is hard to believe that something as mindless and mechanical as an algorithm could produce such wonderful things. No matter how impressive the products of an algorithm, the underlying process always consists of nothing but a set of individually mindless steps succeeding each other without the help of any intelligent supervision; they are ‘automatic’ by definition: the workings of an automaton” (Dennett 53). Dennett suggests that the automaticity of evolutionary algorithms and algorithms in general makes them unimpressive and thereby suggests that humans are still more unimpressive, but this is untrue. We should not be offended by the idea that a machine made up of many mindless algorithms can best us, because even our own brains are composed of composite parts that, in essence, are mindless algorithms as well, which cumulatively form brilliant neural networks. The tendency to look for meaning in the nature or origin of humankind is something even Darwin was guilty of in Origin of Species, when he insisted that his theory is more interesting and beautiful than the Creationist theory, yet chose not to reject the notion of a Creator outright (Darwin 173-174). This tendency is a pervasive bias that lingers into the age of AI, but the AI “infosphere” offers an opportunity to finally escape this bias. There is 77

no need to look for meaning in the origins or the nature of humankind, when there is meaning—terabytes of information—in the basic cellular or computational units that biological and artificial intelligence is composed of. Recognizing that information is the fabric of the universe, and that humans are only one embodiment of this information, will allow us to remove our human-centric blinders and prepare us for a future that will be defined by artificial intelligence. “Synthetic” artificial intelligence initially appeared incompatible with Darwinian theory. However, analysis of both Darwin’s evolutionary science and genetic algorithmic computer science demonstrated how AI obeys the fundamental principles of natural selection. Moreover, because AI’s developed form is virtually indistinguishable from human characteristics, it should therefore considered the next evolved form of humankind, a species perhaps called homo syntheticus. This formulation should be adjusted, however, to clarify that AI’s synthetic nature does not mean it does not obey Darwin’s natural laws. Homo artificialis may be a better term. Although AI seemed foreign and dissimilar to humans and human biology, implementing the view of the universe as composed not of opposing material and immaterial components but simply composed of information allowed an understanding of AI that merges biological and artificial intelligence, while also revealing the lingering prejudice for human uniqueness and importance.

Darwin Collection Works Cited Bell, Lee. “Machine learning versus AI: what’s the difference?” Wired, 1 Dec. 2016, www.wired.co.uk/article/machine-learning-ai-explained. Darwin, Charles. “The Descent of Man.” Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 175-243. ---. “The Origin of Species.” Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, Third Edition ed., New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 95158. Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Simon & Schuster, 1995. Floridi, Luciano. “Artificial Intelligence’s New Frontier: Artificial Companions and the Fourth Revolution.” Metaphilosophy, pp. 651-55. [Database Name], www.jstor.org/stable/24439697. Graves, Alex. “Hybrid computing using a neural network with dynamic external memory.” Nature, vol. 538, Oct. 2016, pp. 471-76. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature20101. Grefenstette, John J. “Genetic Algorithms and Machine Learning.” 6th Annual Conference on Computational Learning Theory, 26 July 1993, Santa Cruz, California. ACM Digital Library, doi. org/10.1145/168304.168305. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018. Markoff, John. “Artificial intelligence could improve how we age.” The Washington Post, 18 Oct. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/ theworldpost/wp/2017/10/18/artificial-intelligence-could-improve-how-we-age/?utm_term=.7621c97709a3. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018. McCarthy, John, et al. “A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.” AI Magazine, vol. 27, no. 4, AI MAGAZINE, doi:10.1609/aimag.v27i4.1904. Accessed 13 Jan. 2018. Muoio, Danielle. “Japan is running out of people to take care of the elderly, so it’s making robots instead.” Business Insider, 20 Nov. 2015, www.businessinsider.com/japan-developing-carebots-for-elderlycare-2015-11. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018. Russell, Stuart, and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Vol. 3, Prentice Hall, 2009. Taylor, Mark C. The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture. University of Chicago Press, 2001. 79

Morals Like Species: Morality in the Wake of Darwin Ben Cunningham ’18 Proponents of moral objectivism – those who believe ethical truths exist independent of individuals – typically derive their beliefs from one of two ideologies: theism or human exceptionalism. Theism, the belief that Gods or a God created the universe, claims objective morality based either on divine revelation in scripture, or the mere existence of the deity in question. For the purposes of this paper, only the former claim will be evaluated, and Christianity will represent that particular type of claim. In order to discount Christian moral objectivism, one must disprove the scripture-based belief in special acts of creation, otherwise known as Creationism. Human exceptionalism, the belief that the human species possesses categorically distinct and superior characteristics from and to other creatures, claims objective morality comes from humanity itself. It relies on the ideas of distinct species and evolutionary telos, and consequently one must discount both ideas in order to discount human exceptionalism as a whole. From the conclusions of Darwin’s theory of evolution – no distinct species and no biological telos –, this paper intends to refute both theism and human exceptionalism, without which moral objectivism has no logical foundation. This paper ultimately intends to show that, in the absence of moral objectivism, Darwin’s theory of evolution also offers a new and practical approach to morality. Just as Darwin redefines species as a subjective but nevertheless useful concept, Darwin’s theory of evolution points towards a new understanding of morality: no longer objective, morality exists only as a survival tool with which humans create and preserve society. Because the scientific legitimacy and explanatory simplicity of Darwin’s theory of evolution supersede that of Christian scripture, Darwin’s refutation of Creationism carries logical weight. To begin with, Darwin’s refutation of Creationism – God created distinct species, humans being one of them – relies on his rejection of the objectivity of ‘species.’ In particular, Darwin rejects the notion of ‘objective’ species, the creationist idea of distinct kinds, and instead claims that species must be treated as “artificial combinations made for convenience” (Darwin 172). Darwin arrives at this conclusion via his theory of Natural Selection, which shows that the only “distinction between species and well-marked varieties is” that the well80

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marked varieties are “connected at the present day by intermediate gradations, whereas species were formerly thus connected” (Darwin 172). In a sense, Natural Selection necessarily implies that all classes of creatures live in a constant state of change, divergence and death, and thus all distinguishing classifications have value in only in the sense of categorical understanding, but bear no significance in relation to objective understanding. Although such conclusions undoubtedly refute Creationism, what makes Darwin’s theory of evolution superior? In contrast to Creationism, Darwin’s theory relies on the scientific method, and thereby produces predictable, falsifiable, and simple solutions to the question of biological origins. The foundation of Darwin’s theory of Evolution and Natural Selection lies in several inductively – from the particular to the general – derived sub-claims: Natural Variation, Struggle for Existence, and Heritability. In the case of Natural Variation, Darwin cites the various breeds of domestic pigeons; in the case of Struggle for Existence, Darwin cites the general fact that “more individuals are produced than can possibly survive” and correspondingly explains the “importance of a large number of eggs or seeds” as biological defense against “much destruction at some period of life”; and in the case of Heritability, Darwin cites the “reappear[ance]” of “rare deviations” from parent to child, particularly in the cases of “albinism, prickly skin, hairy bodies, &c.” (Darwin 109, 111, 99). From these inductively-reasoned sub-claims, Darwin derives his 81

theory of Natural Selection: due to the Struggle for Existence, preferable (in terms of survival) Variations are inherited and passed down. Although many claim the contrary, the theory of evolution is also falsifiable; through the use of predictions, Darwin’s theory can be proven wrong. In a paper titled “Falsifiable Predictions of Evolutionary Theory,” Mary B. Williams meticulously shows how Darwin’s prediction of the existence of intermediate forms “is indeed a prediction of the theory and, second, that it is testable” (Williams 519). Stanton Braude also believes in the predictability of evolution, and as an example cites Richard D. Alexander who predicted that “evolution ought to produce a eusocial vertebrate”, or a vertebrate that acts similar to social insects (Braude). This eusociality was discovered in the “naked mole-rat,” therefore showing the predictability of evolution (Braude). Falsifiable and inductively reasoned, Darwin’s theory of Evolution thus refutes the fundamental claim of Creationism and explains many occurrences that Creationism cannot: “why a part …. of great importance to the species, should be eminently liable to variation,” why “large groups go on increasing in size and diverging in character,” and why parts of animals should “so frequently bear the plain stamp of inutility” (Darwin 166, 164, 169). Relying on scripture rather than scientific methodology, and failing account for occurrences of nature, the Creationism pales in comparison to the Darwin’s theory of evolution; consequently, the Christian claim for moral objectivism must be rejected.

Darwin Collection The potential objection to the premise that Christianity represents the theism deserves to be addressed. To begin with, Christian Creationism represents a particular kind of belief system, one that posits a supernatural hand in the creation of life based on scripture (Judaism, for example). Any religions that fall under this category are necessarily refuted for the same reasons Christianity is refuted by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Systems of belief that do not fall under this category –Deism or Pantheism, for example – though exempt from Darwin’s criticism, are not exempt from another criticism: unfalsifiability. By virtue of their independence from scripture, these belief systems cannot be falsified and therefore must be rejected in favor of falsifiable ones. In the words of Christopher Hitchens: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” (“Hitchen’s Razor”). For these reasons, Christian Creationism fairly represents theistic claims of objectivity, and Darwin fairly refutes them. Darwin’s theory of evolution discredits human exceptionalism from two angles: species do not exist, and thus there is no definite human species; and, the absence of evolutionary telos rejects the possibility of biological superiority. In The Descent of Man, Darwin proves that humans fulfill the requirements of the sub-claims for Natural Selection (Variation, Struggle for Existence, and Inheritance). Darwin cites the variability of human “faces,” “muscles,” “teeth,” “proportions and dimensions of the various parts of the body,” and “mental faculties” as evidence of human variability (Darwin 194). Darwin then points to the transmission from parent to child of “tastes and habits, general intelligence,” and “insanity and deteriorated mental powers” as evidence of the heritability of human variations (Darwin 196). Finally, Darwin presents “the difficulty of gaining subsistence” as the “primary fundamental check to the continued existence of man,” or as evidence of the Struggle for Existence (Darwin 197). Having proved the necessary sub-claims true for humans as well as animals, Darwin concludes that the “early progenitors of man” must have been “exposed to the … rigid law of natural selection” (Darwin 200). Subject to the same evolutionary process as other animals, humans must also be subject to the same mutability and ambiguity of biological classification as other animals; in other words, humankind is not a categorically distinct species. Consequently, human exceptionalism can be rejected purely on the grounds that it assumes the existence of a human species. But human exceptionalism can also be rejected on other grounds: it assumes the possibility of biological superiority. As Michael Ruse and Edward Wilson point out, “there is no progress to evolution”: There is no evolutionary telos, and so there is no 83

such thing as biological superiority (Ruse & Wilson 508). Thus, human exceptionalism makes two faulty assumptions – the existence of species and evolutionary telos –, and therefore must be rejected alongside theism. Due to its intimate relation with Darwin’s theory of evolution and its potential as a source for objective morality (although not traditionally considered one), Social Darwinism requires a short rebuttal. Because of its misinterpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, disregard for the natural fallacy, and reliance on the faulty proposition of evolutionary telos, the Social Darwinist claim for objective morality possesses no logical foundation. Without doubt, Darwin’s adherence to contemporary racism bleeds into his scientific writings. Over the course of the Descent of Man, Darwin frequently points to the ‘undeveloped nature’ of other races as evidence of natural selection and evolution; he implies that different races exhibit differing degrees of development. In other words, Darwin implies that some races are closer to animal form than others: “the sense of smell” is of greater service to the “dark coloured races of men” than to the “white and civilized races;” “it is highly probable that savages….would be actually less prolific;” and the “negro” bears similarity to the “gorilla” (Darwin 187, 198, 185). This racism, however, is descriptive, not prescriptive, and that is the primary misinterpretation of the Social Darwinist. Although Darwin relies on common – albeit racist – perceptions of other races as evidence for his argument, he never ethicizes his perceptions or observations. To derive social darwinism from Darwin’s theory of evolution is to thus either misinterpret Darwin, or to personally ethicize his theory. The latter approach, however, falls into the naturalistic fallacy, or the translation of “is into ought” ( Ruse & Wilson 508). For this reason, one can neither derive Social Darwinism from Darwin, nor logically establish it with Darwin as a foundation. Finally, Social Darwinism assumes evolutionary telos, or a final goal of evolution. As mentioned in the previous section, there is no Darwinian evidence for this: “There is no progress to evolution. In a purely Darwinian sense, an amoeba is as good as a person” (Ruse and Wilson 508). In light of Darwin’s refutation of the sources of moral objectivity – Gods, and the Gods some see within themselves – an essential question must be entertained: What is left of morality? To start, one must recognize that the abandonment of objective morality does not necessitate the abandonment of morality; the loss of telos does not entail the loss of utility; truth can still exist without Truth. Consequently, the question becomes: what is morality without objectivity? In his concluding remarks in The Descent of Man, Darwin offers the beginning of an answer: 84

Darwin Collection “The small strength and speed of man, his want of natural weapons, &c. are more than counterbalanced, firstly, by his intellectual powers, through which he has formed for himself weapons, tools &.c, though still remaining in a barbarous state, and secondly, by his social qualities which lead him to give and receive aid from his fellow-men” (Darwin 212) In this excerpt Darwin’s explains the necessity of intelligence and society in the context of natural: without them, humans cannot survive. The manner in which Darwin defines social qualities – “giv[ing] and receiv[ing] aid from his fellow-men” –, however, closely resembles the fundamental characteristics of morality (Darwin 212). Almost all virtues involve aiding others – generosity, kindness, patience, ect. –, and almost all vices involve the prevention of aid – greed, jealousy, anger, gluttony, ect. “Social qualities,” then, are nothing more than morals (Darwin 212). This makes sense: society – the banding together of individuals – is the only way in which otherwise defenseless humans can survive, and morals are the means by which society is preserved. In other words, in order to survive, we need society, and in order to have society, we need rules to govern and therein maintain it. These rules are ethics. Michael Ruse and Edward Wilson support this conclusion, claiming “ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate” (Ruse & Wilson 510). Furthermore, Matt Ridley, in The Origins of Virtue, offers a modern scientific explanation: Although “our minds have been built by selfish genes” – genes that act out of self-preservation –, these selfishness of these genes have made us “social, trustworthy, and cooperative” (Ridley 521). Ultimately, morals are not abstract principles, but rather necessary survival tools. In this sense, morals bear a strong parallel to species: both are “merely artificial combinations made for convenience” (Darwin 172).

Works Cited: Braude, Stanton. “The Predictive Power of Evolutionary Biology and the Discovery of Eusociality in the Naked Mole Rat.” National Center for Science Education, vol. 17, no. 4, 1997, ncse.com/library-resource/predictive-power-evolutionary-biology-discovery-eusociality. Accessed 18 Jan. 2018. Darwin, Charles. “On the Origin of Species.” 1859. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, Third Norton Critical ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 95-174. ---. “On the Origin of Species.” 1859. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, Third Norton Critical ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 95-174. “Hitchen’s Razor.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor. Accessed 18 Jan. 2018. Ridley, Matt. “The Origins of Virtue.” 1997. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 517-24. Ruse, Michael, and Edward Wilson. “The Evolution of Ethics.” 1985. Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 507-11. Williams, Mary B. “Falsifiable Predictions of Evolutionary Theory.” Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 518-20. JSTOR, www.jstor. org/stable/186285. Accessed 18 Jan. 2018.

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The Crucial Pitfall of Social Darwinism: The Case for Diversity in Education Arin Chinnasathian ’18 Charles Darwin’s revolutionary scientific idea of evolution and natural selection has empowered and shifted the realm of human thinking away from the religious authority. However, admirers of Darwin interpreted the idea not as a naturalistic challenge to religious thoughts, but as a worldview. Social Darwinists, inspired by Herbert Spencer, use the concept of natural selection to justify the enforcement of linear progression of humankind, while Darwin reserves his theory as a mere observation of limitless outward progress. This difference leads to the new interpretation of Darwin’s work—originally a scientific statement—as an “is-ought” statement, known as a naturalistic fallacy. Social Darwinists argue that nothing should interfere the nature’s law—an argument contemporary conservatives have employed to advocate for reduced roles of the government in society. For education, it means pupils are left with less opportunity in the society as education refuses to recognize other measures than scores as growth indicator, marginalizing those with different abilities. Using an example from educational policy, this essay will demonstrate how Social Darwinism can harm our struggle for existence, and therefore that we should revise our approach to education as the tool for equipping human with a wider range of adaptive skills, and not as a mechanism to simply cultivate the most intelligent student. In the first five chapters of The Origin of Species, Darwin explains his theory of evolution with the concepts of struggle for existence and natural selection. To summarize Darwin, all beings occupy a variety of environments which are constantly changing. Incessant adaptation ensures survivability and well-being of a species in an environment. The process is completed by the inheritance of favorable traits (Darwin 111). Darwin depicts the process as follows: “The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inward by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force” (111). The variation of a species possessing the most adaptive advantages has a higher differential survival and reproduction rate. As such, the natural evolutionary outcome for all beings is the prevalence, or the continuous inheritance, of traits that let a specific species 87

thrive in each environment. Consequently, the argument lends itself to a notion of “the survival of the fittest.” This notion of survival of the fittest and natural selection, according to Darwin’s letter to Albert R. Wallace, are essentially the same (Darwin). The term survival of the fittest was popularized by Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher famously attributed to social Darwinism. Unfortunately, by adopting the term “survival of the fittest,” Darwin risked compromising his theory with its Lamarckian connotation of a zero-sum environment. The zero-sum connotation suggests a linear progression, and the pathos appeals to our reactionary sense of survival. It is easy, and perhaps not wholly incorrect, to draw an allusion from his theory into the societal realm. Moreover, it is suggesting that there is a specific principle on which a society must operate (“Social Darwinism”). As such, social Darwinists take Darwin’s factual statement into a ought statement, establishing Darwin’s scientific observation as an unmodern authority. The enforced natural selection would conversely become artificial, changing both the natural circumstances beyond our knowledge and the rules of survival before we can even realize it. Darwin does not necessarily endorse social Darwinist views, but he leaves ambiguities. In The Origin of Species, Darwin did not elaborate whether his theory applies as a social policy (171). He suggests that although the doctrine of descent with modification may not be much further applicable, arguments such as the chains of affinity--relating to species classification, unreliability of fossil remains, and claims about intermediary species can be extended (Darwin 171). As such, it can be subtly inferred that he never intended to apply his theory as a social policy or otherwise. More interestingly, he suggests that by lifting a person out of his or her circumstances, the society benefits. “[Human] manifestly owes this immense superiority to his intellectual faculties, to his social habits, which lead him to aid and defend his fellows, and to his corporeal structure” (Darwin 200). Still, although he explicitly said humanitarian instinct aids human evolution, he did not suggest how humanitarianism should be executed, leaving social Darwinist room to dictate policy direction which will be criticized below. The linear interpretation of Darwin’s natural selection theory in education has led to policies which penalize students and teachers who fail to meet qualitative standards. As academic accomplishment, or scores, become an increasingly significant indicator of success, some schools go to great length to achieve desirable results. According to a study by policy and educa88

Darwin Collection tion consultant Christopher H. Tienken, some schools demote teachers or lower their salaries in response to their students’ unfavorable academic outcomes. Moreover, systems with high emphasis on exit exams like that in Japan are hostile toward student with developmental circumstances, condemning them to socioeconomic immobility (Hancock). When education acts as a mere selection of minds most fit for a particular system, there rises the question of how long the established system can endure. In principle, environment, either geographically or economically, constantly evolves. The enforced selection may weed out those unfit in today’s socioeconomic context, but in the process, it will also weed out those who possess skills which could be more relevant later. As such, social Darwinist education policy equips us as a species poorly against dynamics. On the other hand, according to reports by Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Finland is constantly ranked among the top ten OECD countries that provide quality education since 2000 (“Finland and PISA”). Its success relies on relieving economic burden of student’s family, providing all students in-class and beyond-classroom resources, support for children with special needs, and encourage parents’ input in education (Hancock, Finnish Education 6-16). Education systems in both Finland and the United States share the same goal of harnessing children’s learning potential. Yet the Finnish system, by taking a participatory approach rather than a one-size-fits-all one to measure intellect, is creating a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats situation. Without a need of entrance exam until at least high school, children are given about 18 years of time to develop their learning abilities, during which they are closely supervised. By allowing parent participation along with an emphasis on local education, the system allows for the creation of a collaborative atmosphere, making education a less stressful environment and thus eliminating unnecessary hindrances to the children’s mental development. By putting students from all socioeconomic background together, all parties—from poor families to rich—are obligated to invest in their children’s education, thereby bringing together more resources and specific attention to the students and schools. Also, due to their emphasis on homework limitation and extracurricular growth, students may take time to advance other interest or integrate it with academics more easily with support from adults, so recreation and academics go hand in hand, benefitting all. In the long term, the universal access provides a fairer chance for students to succeed, as well as fostering intellectual capacity in a learner-friendly environment, culminating in a better quality education for all people in the society in the long run. This 89

way, all students can thrive according to their innate and learned abilities better. However, one can argue that from an evolutionary standpoint, by keeping the less inherently intellectual individuals in the system, countries are keeping the less intelligent population in their genetic pool. This universal system eradicates competition and thus discourages spontaneous development. Social Darwinists may argue that Finnish universalistic redistributive approach would slow down evolution by diffusing the less favorable learning traits. It can be argued further that the development of artificial intelligenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a technology that could potentially triumph all human intelligence, thereby maximizing efficiency in societiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;will make educating unintelligent population a redundant thought socially and economically. As such, education must put emphasis on creating the best minds to develop technologies to benefit human race evolutionarily. By evening out public funding, Finland may be behind in evolution by postponing the achievement of a world-changing technology (Finnish Education 10). The problem with such a view is the linear mindset it assumes concerning evolution. As discussed above, evolution is about adaptation, and circumstances are dynamic. The Social Darwinist argument above assumes that productivity is the ultimate evolutionary goal, hence the creation of AIs makes sense. By changing the circumstancesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;introducing smarter AIs, there is a possibility that human intelligence becomes redundant, and therefore make human inferior to AIs in this regard. Educating more people with quality education can not only keep human a relevant economic player, but also create a more enlightened society by making better citizens. However, the most important element about spreading out educative resources is that societies will be able to include more people into education, diversifying the talent pool in each society. With smarter people in all fields, more skills are enhanced and cherished, allowing human to utilize those skills more easily. Fields that stand to benefit are those traditionally undervalued by the mainstream school of education, such as traditional medicine. With greater range of expertise, the society can adapt to a wider range of changes in environment. According to Darwin, better adaptation means better evolution. As such, the non-social-Darwinist approach in education is evolutionarily more favorable. Naturally, all beings will ultimately reject unfavorable traits anyway. However, the artificial acceleration of the process brings about the prospect of uncertainty, possibly ultimately changing the very environment that our survival depends on. When we keep people down the ladder of educa90

Darwin Collection tion by justifying that their biological incompetence makes them deserve poorer treatment, we are limiting ourselves from a wider range of skills that although now irrelevant, could benefit us as circumstances change, especially in today’s ultra-dynamic world. This Social Darwinism worldview is, therefore, detrimental to our own survival. We should instead take Darwin’s ideas for what they truly represent—the expanding, outward progress of natural selection, and not the linear illusion Social Darwinists portray, especially in education. This way, with more competent and diverse human resources, we can increase our chance of proliferation as a species. Works Cited Darwin, Charles. “Letter no. 5145.” Darwin Correspondence Project, U of Cambridge, www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-5145. xml#mark-5145.f3. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018. Darwin, Charles. “The Origin of Species.” Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., Norton, 2001, pp. 95-174. Darwin, Charles. “The Descent of Man.” Darwin, edited by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., Norton, 2001, pp. 175-254. “Finland and PISA.” Ministry of Education and Culture, web.archive.org/ web/20130108124633/http://www.minedu.fi/pisa/?lang=en. Accessed 27 Feb. 2018. Finnish Education in a Nutshell. Finnish National Agency for Education, www.oph.fi/download/146428_Finnish_Education_in_a_Nutshell.pdf. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018. Hancock, LynNell. “Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?” Smithsonian, Sept. 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-arefinlands-schools-successful-49859555/. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018. “Social Darwinism Emerges and Is Used to Justify Imperialism, Racism, and Conservative Economic and Social Policies.” Science and Its Times, edited by Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer, vol. 5, Gale, 2001. World History in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/ CV2643450570/WHIC?u=lom_notredphs&xid=201e248b. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018. Tienken, Christopher H. “Neoliberalism, Social Darwinism, and Consumerism Masquerading as School Reform.” EBSCO eBook Collection, 6 Mar. 2013,

Minding Morality: Realizing Morality’s Subjective Nature Kate Liu ’19 With ever increasing globalization, every action has the potential to reach more lives. As such, morality, “the branch of knowledge concerned with right and wrong conduct, duty, [and] responsibility” has become an issue that is more prevalent than ever (“Morality,” def. 5b). Charles Darwin, with his groundbreaking publications The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, offers insight into human nature and moral principles. Through his theories of the survival of the fittest and natural selection, in which slight advantages in variation are selected for and shape the traits of living beings, Darwin reshaped how we interpret the conception and application of ethical truths. In light of such reinterpretation of morality, it is critical for humans to decide how to approach ethics, as it can greatly affect farreaching decisions in current societies. While some argue that morality is guided and implemented by a metaphysical authority, Darwinian applications of ethics reveal a lack of both telos and an objective basis for morality, thereby, if accepted, necessitates a different interpretation of ethics: one that must continuously question and evaluate moral standards in the spirit of modernity. Many philosophers argue that in order for humans to abide by ethical principles, they must assume that a metaphysical force leads morality towards a telos, or end, and thus that ethics possesses objective and intrinsic value. Especially within substantive ethics, determining how to achieve the “good” often relies on the basic existence of an ultimate, teleological good. As Aristotle justifies, “for it is for the sake of this that we all do what we do, and the first principle and cause of goods is, we claim, something prized and divine” (Aristotle 63). Morality exists and is practiced in society based upon the notion that it leads, as Aristotle believes, to an end purpose that is objectively universal for all conscious beings. Even in a modern mindset, in which Kant stresses opposition to authority, he too accepts the need of a metaphysical authority for morality to ensure that it is fulfilled. In examining the establishment of morality, Kant argues, “such a metaphysic of morals, completely isolated, [...] is not only an indispensable substratum of all sound theoretical knowledge of duties, but is at the same time a desideratum of the highest importance to the actual fulfillment of their precepts” 92

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(Kant 207). A universal, metaphysical moral law is, as he regards, both a foundation of all applications of ethics and a component that is necessary to value morality and thus live ethically. Consequently, as Aristotle and Kant argue, morality is implemented in society through the justification that there is an objective foundation for morality. However, as Darwin’s theory of evolution reveals, morality does not need to progress towards a final end, and thus does not need to possess a metaphysical foundation; instead, human beings depend on and utilize morality simply to gain potential advantages to ensure their survival and reproduction. Darwinian evolution and natural selection, through inductive and scientific reasoning, disproves the necessity of the concept of teleology in nature. As Darwin explains, “it is no scientific explanation to assert that [animals] have all been formed on the same ideal plane” (Darwin 193). Through empirical evidence of similar patterns between a vast spectrum of animals, Darwin inductively reasons that there is no metaphysical intention or teleology in the development of species and their traits. Rather, he speculates that characteristics in nature arise from the “struggle for survival,” which is entirely subjective to the given circumstances. With regards to human beings, Darwin’s theory contends that “man is variable in body and mind; and that the variations are induced, either directly or indirectly, by the same general causes, and obey the same general laws, as with the 93

lower animals” (Darwin 200). Since humans both arose from a process of evolution through nature and are inherently a part of nature, they are subject to the same principles of evolution, including the lack of a purposeful direction. Darwin’s insight into the evolution of human traits, including our mental faculties, reveals that morality itself can be a product of natural selection designed to increase fitness. Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, in examining evolutionary ethics, concludes that “there is no absolute moral direction to evolution through selection,” and since “there are many different types of behavior that all deliver the cooperation demanded by natural selection [...] ethics has no rational foundation” (Ruse, “Darwin Made Me” 67). The lack of a definite purpose to evolution arises from its lack of objective justification. Thus, Darwinian explanations of nature demonstrate that there is in fact no objective basis on which to justify morality. Ethics exist not - as Kant and Aristotle believe - to achieve some metaphysical, universal good, but instead to subjectively increase fitness in continually changing circumstances. In response to evolution’s impact on the subjective nature of ethics, critics such as Hume and Moore reason that since Darwinian applications to ethics commit the naturalistic fallacy, evolution cannot be used to justify morality. According to the naturalistic fallacy, there exists a distinction between what one should do and what is done, ie. the “ought” and the “is”. As Hume observes concerning the relation between the morality and what exists in nature, “[it] seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it” as “the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects” (Hume 715). Deductively speaking, as Hume points out, morality and what one should do is distinct and not comparable. Building off Hume’s identification of the difference between the “is” and the “ought,” Moore states in his Principia Ethica, “If he confuses ‘good,’ which is not a natural object, with any natural object whatever, then there is a reason for calling that a naturalistic fallacy” (qtd. in Frankena 470). As such, Moore argues that it is impossible to logically apply physical phenomena to abstract imperatives such as morality. Therefore, critic of evolutionary ethics Thomas Henry Huxley concludes from the naturalistic fallacy that “the ethical progress of society depends not on imitating the cosmic process” (Huxley 503). As humankind’s moral faculties exist separately from nature’s evolutionary process, the lack of objectivity and teleology in nature itself cannot be applied to ethics. Thus, this contradiction seems to limit 94

Darwin Collection the degree to which Darwinian evolutionary theories can possibly be relevant to ethics. Though some philosophers argue that evolutionary ethics is logically fallacious, Robert J. Richards demonstrates that since all ethical systems are empirically concluded from facts, the naturalistic fallacy is invalid and thus cannot be utilized to discredit evolutionary ethics. The naturalistic fallacy, which argues that morality is distinct from nature, draws upon the premise that, as Moore believed, “all ethical propositions [are] defined by the fact that they predicate a single unique objective concept” (qtd. in Ruse, Taking Darwin 89). The naturalistic fallacy depends on the fact that morality and ethical systems are derived deductively from a unique source separate from nature. However, ethical systems are themselves derived and justified inductively from facts and physical experiences - not from a deductive process. After examining the basis and application of ethical systems in society, Richards reveals that “the justification of first moral principles and inference rules must ultimately lead to an appeal to the beliefs and practices of men, which of course is an empirical appeal. So moral principles ultimately can be justified only by facts” (Richards 286). The justification of morality, therefore, originates from physical reality itself. As such, the claim that there is no logical bridge between the “is” and the “ought” is established on a false premise, and is therefore mistaken - there exists no division between the “is” and the “ought” and the naturalistic fallacy is not a logical fallacy at all. Even if ethical systems were derived completely deductively

and not based on empirical evidence, logical transitivity still demonstrates how morality originated from that which Darwin had observed in nature. It is necessary to properly define morality, or the “ought,” in order to compare it to the “is”. Ultimately, ethics exists to promote “the general good, which [is] the welfare and survival of the group” (Richards 270). Similarly, traits that have evolved in nature, as Darwin observed in animals, exist to achieve higher chances of survival. One cannot simply make the leap from natural traits to morality, but realizing that both are utilized to accomplish “survival of the fittest” allows for the transitive law to build a connection between the two. Thus, morality, through the denial of the naturalistic fallacy and the application of the transitive law, does originate from and is accordance with nature. As I have demonstrated that morality lacks an objective foundation and definite direction without committing the naturalistic fallacy, it is essential that humans recognize the limits of their innate, biological senses of morality, especially in the rapidly transforming digital age. Understanding ethics in terms of evolution reveals the influences of human biology and genetics in enforcing morality to ensure “long-term group survival and harmony and [...] the multiplication of our genes many times” (Ruse and Wilson 510). In order to most efficiently secure such overarching survival, human genes have evolved to create an innate and instinctive belief in the objectivity of morality within humans. As Ruse concludes, morality is “a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes [...] the illusion lies not in the morality itself, but in its sense of objectivity” (Ruse, Taking Darwin 253). Humans are predisposed to believe in an objective foundation for morality, as Ruse indicates, because it provides an advantage in nature. Such an innate predisposition has allowed humans to overcome more short-sighted desires for pleasure and abide by ethical standards that eventually lead to an increased chance of survival and reproduction. However, it is imperative to remember that despite what we are biologically programmed to believe, the absence of an external authority guiding morality allows, as philosopher John Dewey states, the “principle of transition [to be] freed [...] for application to mind and morals and life” (Dewey 486). Richards supports this idea of continual changing moral standards, observing that “the criterion of morally approved behavior will remain constant, while the conception of what particular acts fall under the criterion will continue to change” (Richards 281). Since the environment humans live in changes and variations inevitably arise, the terms for the struggle for existence will shift as 96

Darwin Collection well. And in that morality exists to provide humans with an advantage in this changing struggle, ethical standards and principles will have to modify to continue achieving their goal of ensuring survival. With technological advances increasing at such a rapid rate, our objective sense of morality, which evolved through a much lengthier time span, cannot cope. As humans grow into a modern mindset, in which authorities are questions and limitations are realized, we must recognize that the methods of achieving long-term survival are changing, and that ethical principles that were once essential for survival are no longer as advantageous. Consequently, understanding the subjectivity of morality requires a reimagining of ethics itself. Actions influenced by adherence to moral principles have the ability to affect more people than ever, and with boundless potential in innovation and technology looming ahead, the issue of how to abide by and regard morality is more pressing than ever. Prominent philosophers such as Kant and Aristotle believed that in order to implement moral worth and value, a metaphysical authority must guide morality towards a set telos. Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection offers a different perspective of morality, one in which ethical principles are subjective, human creations used to better increases chances of survival in a natural world. Critics of such an application argue that it commits the naturalistic fallacy by deriving morality, or the “ought,” from what is observed in nature, or the “is.” However, through both utilizing the transitive law logically and observing the inductive nature of ethics in general, I have shown that the naturalistic fallacy is not actually a fallacy at all, and that morality does indeed originate and abide by natural laws. As such, humans have been genetically shaped by nature to believe in an objective good in order to value morality. In the rapidly changing world of technology and in the modern spirit, we must thus realize the subjective nature of morality in order to adapt and preserve our existence as a species. Though some may believe that morality demands an objective basis and metaphysical authority in order to be valued, it is actually derived from and exists in accordance with natural selection in nature, demonstrating that the “good” is subjective and constantly changing in order to best achieve survival. Consequently, it is time that humans realize and question our innate belief in the objective foundation of morals to better equip ourselves with the tools necessary for survival moving forward.

Works Cited Aristotle. “Nicomachean Ethics.” Ethics: The Essential Writings, by Gordon Daniel Marino, Modern Library paperback ed., New York, Modern Library, 2010. Darwin, Charles. “The Descent of Man.” 1871. Darwin: Texts Commentary, by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., New York, W.W. Norton, 2001. Dewey, John. “The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy.” 1909. Darwin: Texts Commentary, by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., New York, W.W. Norton, 2001. Frankena, W. K. “The Naturalistic Fallacy.” Mind, vol. 48, no. 192, 1939, pp. 464–477. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2250706. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Auckland, Floating Press, 1740. Huxley, Thomas Henry. “Evolution and Ethics.” 1893. Darwin: Texts Commentary, by Philip Appleman, 3rd ed., New York, W.W. Norton, 2001. Kant, Immanuel. “Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals.” 1785. Ethics: The Essential Writings, by Gordon Daniel Marino, Modern Library paperback ed., New York, Modern Library, 2010. “morality, n.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, June 2017, www. oed.com/view/Entry/122093. Accessed 12 January 2018. Richards, Robert J. “A Defense of Evolutionary Ethics.” Biology and Philosophy, 1986, pp. 265-93, philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/ richards/A%20Defence%20of%20Evolutionary%20Ethics.pdf. Accessed 14 Jan. 2018.