Introduction to Philosophy, Lecture 8: Sample Final Exam

Instructions

Your Final is much like your Midterm, but I'd like you to present your own philosophy....

Imagine you are giving the world an idea it needs to think about or benefit from. I'd like you to 1) give a solid introduction to this idea 2) identify and address objections to it 3) write a conclusion which discusses other ideas that might be related to it. After reading your midterms, I'd like you to do more with sections 1 and 2 – please do write a bit more, be more specific, give concrete examples.

400-500 words.

Sample Final Exam: On Seeing

Much has been said about the public's addiction to cable news or TikTok. People only know what they fill their minds with; they fill their minds with out-of-context outrages or trends devoid of any substance. Supposedly, this is why political life, if not society, has collapsed. There's no shared reality, so there's no real way to talk to each other. Elected officials in the U.S. blame TikTok in particular for not showing us the truth about the Middle East. Elected officials in other countries–countries like France–conceive the matter in other ways.

I have a different analysis of the situation. We want to speak of common knowledge, of what the public in general must know and seek. This is an enterprise which touches on what we believe and value more than any set of facts. If we believe and value the wrong things, we will destroy the ability of facts to make a difference.

The catch is that believing and valuing the so-called right thing can also constitute a trap. A lot of Americans think that if we all believed the same thing–if, say, every single one of us devoutly attended the same church–that would fix every single problem. Some time ago I knew a guy who was into this. He was also really into lifting and other recreational activities which weren't the healthiest for his mind. He said he wanted to be President so he could unite everyone. Fine, I said. Then I asked if he knew who wrote the Declaration of Independence. No answer. I followed up by asking what famous phrases come from the Declaration. Again, no answer. Lifting bro, as I shall refer to him, is only a more obvious example of a larger problem. If you actually think we should all believe the same thing for the sake of unity, no room remains for facts. It does feel like many of us share a notion of patriotism which is extremely resistant to facts at the moment.

How to solve the impasse? How to get to a healthier notion of belief, one which could ground common knowledge? One which would let the right facts–knowledge of injustice, inequality, power imbalances, injuries to the innocent–haunt us? We could still disagree about what to do, but we wouldn't pretend that such problems didn't exist in the first place.

I think we have to reflect on how it is we see others. Proust has this magnificent passage where he speaks of our judgments and assumptions filling up our field of vision, creating the image of the person we think we see:

“Even this very simple act we call “seeing a person we know” is in part an intellectual act. We fill the physical appearance of the being we’re seeing with all of our notions about him, and in the more complete picture we form of him, these notions predominate. They succeed at inflating his cheeks so perfectly, at adhering to the line of his nose so faithfully, at coalescing with his voice, in all its nuances, so seamlessly (as though his voice were but a transparent envelope), that each time we see this face, hear this voice, it’s these notions we’re encountering.”

I can imagine some are not thrilled with this passage. When I see someone's cheeks, I see them as redder and jollier if I think they're someone who is usually cheerful? Or I see someone's eyes as narrow if I think they're plotting and untrustworthy? But there's truth to this, no matter how much we believe we are objective beholders of beauty. Seeing others as beautiful might be the best and worst example of this, to be sure. How many predetermined, socially constructed, lazy and familiar standards must one meet to be considered attractive by us?

If we realize how much we view others through our assumptions about them, we can put ourselves in a position to genuinely know. Right now, what's happening is that people have some horrible thoughts about others which are reinforced by a tidal wave of horrible lies. Things are so bad that a number of them will say that there are only assumptions, only opinions, no relevant facts. We don't need to take their shamelessness too seriously; they're saying they have the right to be angry in any given situation. But we do need to ask why terrible thoughts and assumptions are not being questioned at all.

You can say I may have thrown my own remedy for the situation under the bus. Plenty of angry people will say "I have the right to my assumptions." If they do that, what hope is there for changing anything? I don't think change works, though, by trying to get someone spewing hate to fix their behaviors instantly. We have to imagine what a climate which holds people responsible for bad assumptions looks like. It might look like one where students are encouraged to know more for the sake of arts and leadership, not just rushed into the workforce. Maybe people respect teachers, librarians, and scholars because they believe that knowledge could change their lives. The highest paid public employee in a given state may not be the football coach. We commit to making sure everyone has the necessities, not just assume: we make sure clean water, housing, and nutrition are available to all.

These ideas are coming less from a partisan approach and more from these notions: 1) we should be careful when we judge 2) people who know, or try to know, should be valued 3) "do no harm" is the default; we don't harm others or let harm happen as we will tempt ourselves to justify the cruelty we allowed. If material reality is defined by how we see, it stands to reason a change in material reality will change how we see. In a way, a fact is the final act of appreciating and understanding the world we live in. Much of my life has been hearing something that struck me as curious–for example, that the U.S. has 4% of the world's population, but 20% of its prison population–and then realizing the enormous truth behind such a statistic. The fact isn't a statement to win an argument as much as a gateway to an entirely different experience, a world I hadn't even imagined was there.