I have to compose a major work (novella) for my school and have chosen to use a philosophical concept as my main theme behind the story, like the Wachowski brothers used to incorporate their ideas in the Matrix Trilogy.
To be brief, I am not that skilled or knowledged in all the philosophical theories or concepts and therefore this task will be undeniably hard for me. I can accept my short-comings. This is where I require your help…
If you have any suggestions, ideas, or would like to discuss any philosophical concepts that you feel would work well in a story, I’d really appreciate the help. I would like to remind you that I don’t want you to write this for me… I would only like your help in understanding certain areas/concepts of philosophy in which I can incorporate into my story.
And it is only because of my limited knowledge in this subject (I am only 16) that I require your assistance. Although, I have always taken interest in this field of study.
I have also browsed the forums on topics dealing with purpose, free will and God… which all interest me.
I had an idea on what the general storyline of the story would be… it had to do with the concept of “Messiahs”, purpose and free will. However, I realized that I could not incorporate all these concepts cohesively and asthetically it would be a train-wreck. So, I came here to expand my knowledge on such topics…
So, if anyone has any concepts they would like to discuss with me, or even if they have a suggestion or two; it would be greatly appreciated.
Zeno’s arrow. This guy shoots an arrow, but it never reaches its target because it will always be exactly half way there. 1 / 2 then 1 / 4 then 1 /8 then 1 / 16 then 1 /32 and so on. You can have fun with that. See, how and when you arrive at something all depends on perspective
A quick definition of Hedonism is doing what ever gives you pleasure in the near future and don’t worry about the long term, happiness is the goal to life. Happiness is usualy gained by avoiding pain and maximising pleasure.
Stoisism is the opposite, basicaly for go immediate happiness for possible future happiness. Happiness is usualy interpreted to be living a virtous life not necessarily avoiding pleasure, but not pursuing it either.
That is a very basic example of both, I hope it helps.
It wouldn’t be very difficult applying these concepts to a story, hell; it could be a juxposition of two main characters.
I also wanted to deal with the issue of purpose, you know; why are we here?
And at first I wrote a piece dealing with God, Messiah and purpose. I still would like to expand on that if anyone has any compelling concepts or suggestions.
But I will be looking into this Hedonism and Stoisism. I need to do a little reseach before I dive in head first. Thanks again.
Hi Source,
Let’s say there are two lines drawn on the sidewalk. I want to walk from one to the other. Each step I make will cover half of the distance between me and the line I’m approaching. According to hermes, and quite a few others, I will never get to that second line. My steps just get smaller and smaller as I get closer and closer to the line. But using the methods of calculus, one may consider the “limit” as my number of steps approaches infinity. This limit is the distance between the two lines.
Notice that we cleverly avoided what happens when the number of steps reaches infinity, as I doubt anyone knows what that question even means. The concept of limit is central to integration, differentiation, and the methods of basic calculus. For example, differentiation gives the limit as, say, an amount of time approaches zero. Imagine we are trying to determine the velocity of a running horse. We check his position at time a and then at time b. The closer time a and b are to each other (the closer the amount of time between a and b is to 0), the more instantaneous our velocity measurement is. We can imagine the “limit” as that amount of time approaches zero; we can approach a true velocity. However, as perhaps hermes’ post suggests, we cannot find a velocity if our time difference is zero. This would be like a picture. There can be no movement over zero time. To me, the paradoxical nature of limit (that we know there exists velocity but it is not able to actually be measured with any sort of exactness) is a direct result of the fact that we cannot understand infinity.
Ratilus, I’m afraid your wrong. What you describe are two forms of Hedonism. Hedonism covers any ethics that puts pleasure as its goal. Here are some articles explaning things:
(Warning, I didn’t read these links but they seem on the level. Not responsible for grossly inacurate information.)
However, the conflict you describe is an interesting one. I think Hume talked about it some. It also connects to Identity issues.
Now if I were to play with “philosophical” novella I would probably mess around with Identity issues. What makes you you? Your memories, your personality, your voteing behavor, your body, your soul, your social position, your legal papers. You could have a group that get’s away with “murder” by not invokeing the state’s definition of death- Brain Death. They could employ scientologist, drug coctails, legal fanagling, all sorts of things to effecively strip the identity of a liveing person. Ohh, yeah that sounds like fun.
LostGuy, I have been a bit unclear, what I ment was the definitions used under Ethical Philosophy where they (Hedonism and Stoicism) are opposite from one another as ethical principals. If you wish I can post the longer and techincal definitions, but I would rather not if no one cares, but thanks for showing me my mistake.
Idea:
Science advances to such a degree that it can determine every individual action resulting from a near infinite number of stimuli.
Determinism.
Furthermore, Science can also design, before hand, individual reactions, abilities, etc around the parents’ wishes.
There is no free will, thus there is no morality. Designer babies are not immoral.
In this backdrop, tell a story of a man or woman who somehow inexplicably chooses against their “programming”.
This would be Popper’s falsification test for the empirical method. Since at least one human being exhibits the will to choose for themself.
Throw in some stereotypical characters, do all that you can to remind the reading public that they are superior, etc etc… and you will have a bestseller on your hands.
There is no start or finish in an infinite set of steps, so you wouldn’t be able to reach the non-existent ‘finish’, but I don’t see what prevents one from stepping a finite number of steps within that infinite set?
Source, I’ve always wanted to read/see something that addressed the mental/behavioral reaction of the Self/soul/consciousness to what happens to it when the body travels forward or backward through time, especially if it is a Self/soul/consciousness which thinks there can only be one instance of a soul – and say they come face-to-face with their childhood or death-bed body – or say they don’t blink out of existence or attain God or angel-like qualities when they pass up or prevent their birth or death – how would they (the individual) interpret such an experience? Maybe make it a group of individuals with very different philosophical/religious leanings, who are all on this time traveling experiment together (maybe they are forced into it by some catastrophe on the earth that they are escaping? or something)… what sort of interpretations/discussions/arguments/ways of coping would they have after such an experience?
Great idea. But hasn’t it been done before? I mean; Minority Report, The Giver?
Anyway, I would like to explore this concept with you. There’s only a few questions I must ask.
If everyone’s “programmed”, then there must be someone(s) who are NOT programmed, watching over the rest, correct?
Can you please go into more detail with this determinism/“infinite number of stimuli”? I don’t really understand what you’re saying. Are you saying that because of this technology, the people will program genes? Or will they program the surrounding environment? And if they know every possibility, will they program it so that there will only be one solution?
Can you please explain “Popper’s falsification test for the empirical method”?
The Source: Popper meant that empirical theories could never be verified no matter how many times you tested them, but could be falsified with just one test. For example, the theory “all swans are white” will never be verified no matter how many white swans you observe since there can always be a non-white swan somewhere out there, but it is falsified by observing just one non-white swan.
A great book that discusses the issues GateControlTheory brings up is Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground”. I suspect that you won’t find any interesting philosophical problems that haven’t been the subject of a work of art before.
Determinism is the argument that we (human beings) ultimately possess no free will. Thus the future is already ‘determined’ for us. It comes in several colors and flavors. The most popular (as I understand it) is that we do do have a limited amount of choice, but that, faced with certain circumstances, that range of choices is very narrow.
What I was suggesting was that, through a combination of genetic manipulation coupled with certain form of environmental manipulation (for all you Nurture folks out there) one can supposedly absolutely ensure how a human being will react to a given circumstance. In other words, you can guarantee how any individual will react in advance.
Thus, say, if parents wanted a child who would live simply to serve their needs (a slave so to speak) they could guarentee this by manufacturing a child who is incapable of thinking about freedom and who would, if ever faced with any sort of opportunity to be free, would return to them immediately.
Stefan mentioned Popper and his test.
So finally I would posit that this society would exist at some point in the future. Thos who do the programming are themselves programmed to do so. The last people who were not programmed would have died several generations before, no doubt believing that they had managed to eradicate all evil from the world.
I haven’t read “Notes from the Underground” but I do not doubt that it is the same concept or very similar to it. Alot of it I stole from “Brave New World”.
Which basically is this, to arrive at Utopia, one must destroy free will in human beings. So long as human beings can choose to be greedy, or hurt others, so on and so forth, utopia is not possible.