Valediction

[val-i-dik-shuhn] –noun

1.	an act of bidding farewell or taking leave.

2.	an utterance, oration, or the like, given in bidding farewell or taking leave; valedictory.

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Here we go. Through the course of this class, I do believe I've been inculcated with several important tenets of meta, normative and applied ethics. Innumerable key concepts have been elucidated for me, in a manner neither spurious nor reeking of tarradiddle. Thankfully, unlike some teachers, Professor Johnson did not engage in histrionics to get his point across, and instead approached the class like a deipnosophist, with the room being the table. The class grew in me a predilection for stimulating conversation, and I would sing my paean each day I returned from class to empty my brain onto a blog entry. Yet never was my curiosity slaked--each topic retained extant questions, from which truth awaited, and some were eventually stentorian and clear in their answers. I had my share of bouleversements, and treated my blog, whether I was writing in it or not, as a vade mecum, in which I could trust to lay out what information I had collected and attempt to interpret it.

The class never demanded us to be myrmidons, and hopefully indirectly convinced us not to be sybarites. I may not be a polyglot, but I tried to understand every word. As a person who often vacillates in decisions, the class was an aid to my confidence in moral choices, affirming merely through its persistence in discussing various topics. We parsed what we could with as much perspicacity as could be mustered, and even where we couldn't, abandoned sciolicisms in favored of continued consideration. We traduced none, thoughtfully contemplated our hirsute nonhumans and attempted magnanimity in our observations. Now that it's over, I'm restive and even more curious. This class was never somniferous to me.

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Well, I must say this has been a very engaging class. The format is probably the most efficacious I've encountered, particularly with the emphasis on personal reflection (as should be the major foundation for all courses, but philosophy in particular). I am grateful for the classroom discussions, hopeful that I didn't make too many unnecessary comments, and look forward to future philosophy classes, hopefully continuing this broader sense of understanding I've always been seeking, but, it seems, always just now finding. Hopefully I'll be right on the verge of some great epiphany for the rest of my life. Onward and upward.

Magnanimous

[mag-nan-uh-muhs] - Show IPA Pronunciation –adjective

1.	generous in forgiving an insult or injury; free from petty resentfulness or vindictiveness: to be magnanimous toward one's enemies.

2.	high-minded; noble: a just and magnanimous ruler.

3.	proceeding from or revealing generosity or nobility of mind, character, etc.: a magnanimous gesture of forgiveness.

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It is amazing to me now that fishing scarcely occurred to me to be unethical until this year, at least strongly enough to feel appalled. Perhaps understandably, as mentioned in class, humans do not connect well with fish because their lives, appearance and functions are so much different from ours, but hiding a hook within food to pull the creatures by their upper lip into an environment in which they cannot breathe? If one does have an ethical stance on the suffering of nonhumans, this might be a prime place to start—where torture itself is the form of recreation. Few interactions with other creatures can claim the same.

Certainly part of it relies on the comfort we have with our own environment—pulling fish into the air brings them into our area, and so we may have difficulty expecting it would be hellish for the creature. However, were the roles reversed, and we were pulled to the depths, we might have a very different opinion about what our environment seems to be, while our fishy counterparts may be watching curiously. As this will probably not happen (with them in the human-fishing role), we must instead imagine, and I think most people can agree that if fish are intelligent, which I think they are, fishing is a bit barbaric, to say the least.

As a kid I remember considering this, but never really knowing how to feel about it. In my teen years I preferred playing around with a net—seeing fish bleed at times, or trying to wrench sharp hooks out of their mouths never sat well with me. But it wasn’t until recent years that it really dawned, empathetically, what kind of experience fishing is from a fish’s point of view. And perhaps that’s how we should approach inter-species relationships, particularly sentient ones: with attempted empathy. It’s the least we can do, I think.

Perspicacity

\pur-spuh-KAS-uh-tee\, noun:
Clearness of understanding or insight; penetration, discernment.

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Cruelty is our peculiarity. Consider this: let’s say those mussels, as discussed in class today, were introduced to their new environment naturally, immediately taking over and exterminating/altering huge populations of wildlife. Is this cruel? Of course not. Biological nature’s ebb and flow cannot be blamed for cruelty, even if the creatures themselves died horrible deaths, and in huge numbers. We can intellectualize the event as such, but that sympathy will remain ours alone. Survival demands death, even on a large scale.

Now let’s go with an alien example. We’re living out our lives here on Earth, and one day a spaceship descends from the cosmos, lands in Idaho, and from it steps a low-sentient creature (let’s say a higher sentient species sent it here because they didn’t like its frilly head) that exhales a toxin deadly to humans alone (I don’t know what it would be, but it’s just an example). All over the world humans would be dying because this new, instinct-governed creature appeared and has the naturally ability to dominate us. The creature is not cruel, it’s just acting according to its genetic programming. In a way, this is much the same scenario as above, as would be any natural disasters that cause creatures harm: Nature is impersonal, and does not have compassion for compassion’s sake. It is neither loving nor cruel, nor can it be blamed for acting as it does.

So why can we? We are natural too, right? Indeed we are, but I feel confident in making the argument that while our intellects are still natural, they operate, in part, outside of the dictations of mere survival. And as that is the case, our introduction to situations cannot be mistaken as willed by Nature alone and excusable on that account. We are the aliens sending away the deadly creature.

We have the most responsibilities of anything on this planet. It is not possible for us to go along with Nature’s dictations anymore (I hope I’m not sounding too distant at this point, Nature isn’t some spiritual force). The best that we can do is what we are good at: problematize what would otherwise be simple, and unearth its relevance to the rest of the world. Each and every one of us are philosophers—a beaver builds a dam for shelter, but we have and intellectually indulge billions of different reasons for constructing homes. As such, we cannot hide under the shroud of impersonal Nature, for we are (more often than not, in interspecies and earthly relations) not its minions. We are relatively autonomous.

As such, we are the breeders of cruelty. For if we were to go into Lake Eerie, and personally kill everything that lives there, we would probably not be doing so to survive (as, of course, if we were somehow doing it to survive, it would likely be justifiable). We utilize a natural sympathy in those instances where we understand, and extend a natural cruelty where we do not or do not want to.

We cannot follow Nature’s orders because we recognize how some of them are flawed in an intellectual perspective: it may make emotional or instinctual sense to kill the person who accidentally ran over and killed your wife, but we must have sympathy, we must have reason to keep ourselves from acting supremely in the interests of underpinned survival techniques (other examples: prejudice, sexual aggression, etc). If we were the mussels, we’d second guess how negative our effects are on that lake. We actually must intellectualize, for the sake of ourselves and others. And thankfully for all of us, more often than not an intellectualization of an affair with most facts brought to light sides us on the arm of sympathy and compassion. How else would we survive with one another?

Tarradiddle

\tair-uh-DID-uhl\, noun:
1. A petty falsehood; a fib.
2. Pretentious nonsense.

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Humans are disposed toward objectifying, I think, because if we were to ponder the meaning of each thing we encounter, we would scarcely be able to move. Certainly this notion does not do much justice to our intellectual capacity, but at certain times and places, objects are made out of things that might, on a certain day and with a certain amount of thought, be meaningful. Why?

Because we are the makers of meaning. Perhaps there are two types of objects—those that are as such because of their non-interaction with our intellect, which would place upon them an understanding after asking for some kind of explanation, and then the second type, the one where things become objects for our necessity/enjoyment. The latter is peculiar, in that certain subjects are made objects specifically because of our focus, rather than our ignorance of them. The distinction between involves what meaning we give to that object and the role it fulfills in our satiation.

Acting this way toward one another is inevitable, I think, but not necessarily right. Particularly where humans, similarly self-cognizant intermediaries of thought and action are concerned, it is difficult not to accidentally let this particular objectification for the purpose of our satiation—as we might do with food, the sun, forms of recreation, etc., spill over into the realm of other creatures. It fact, it’s to be expected.

As instinctual and biological creatures, there are some drives that require function beyond what the intellect may demand of the creature in order to stay alive and propagate. This sort of instinct drives sex as well, and tends to (regarding pornography or not) derive objects from subjects due to sexual desires to overrule any intellectual dispositions that might stray from potential propagation.

But we are made best in a thoughtful capacity, I think, which is why I’m undecided on the issue of the morality of pornography. I don’t think I can say with certainty that acting hedonistically is wrong, but when it involves making an object of a sentient creature, it gets hazy. I disagree with zoos but not the mentioned safaris, particularly because, despite what curiosities may be being satiated on our accounts, we are not harming the creatures in pursuit of our enjoyment. So perhaps the biggest problem with pornography is not merely the objectification, but the exploitation (on the part of those being harmed in the creation of pornography), more distinctly?

I only wonder about whether or not objectification is wrong if it causes the subject being objectified no harm. Certainly Kant would say that this might indirectly lead to an inappropriate approach to interaction with subjects later on down the road, and I would agree with him in some cases, as one step in the wrong direction encourages more. But I’m still ambivalent as to whether or not objectification of sentient things is always, under normal circumstances, wrong.