Sapere Aude!

Meta-Ethics in "Your Friends & Neighbors" and "The Shape of Things"

Two Neil LaBute films, Your Friends & Neighbors and The Shape of Things, provide excellent depictions of one of the central debates in meta-ethics, the moral realism vs. moral anti-realism debate. Here are the trailers for both films.

 

In each film, one of the main characters - Evelyn in The Shape of Things and Cary in Your Friends & Neighbors - explicitly suggest that when it comes to morality there are no objective truths. In other words, they both express the moral anti-realist perspective.

The Moral Realism vs. Moral Anti-Realism Debate in The Shape of Things

The meta-ethics debate over objectivity of moral judgments or truth-claims is one of the oldest debates in moral philosophy.  On the one hand, there's the view that there are at least some universal and necessary moral judgments binding on all rational agents.  That's the moral realist view.  On this view, a moral truth is one that is non-empirical, universal and the denial of it leads to self-evident absurdity.  On the other hand, there's the anti-realist view which claims that morality is dependent on human beings or an invetion of human beings.  According to this veiw, morality is contingent, particular, and relative to whatever emotions, desires or cultures we just happen to be socialized within.  The Shape of Things helps illustrate these two different perspectives on the nature of moral judgments.

Evelyn clearly and unabmigiously espouses the anti-realist perspective.  She remarks, "It's all subjective."  Adam denies this view and contends that there are some moral standards that are not merely dependent on his personal views.  In response to Evelyn's challenge that Adam's conception of a "better person" merely reflects his personal, subjective sentiments he says, "No, just better." "Just better" indicates that the thinks the standard is not dependent or relative to him, but independent of how he happens to feel.  To learn more about the sorts of arguments given in support these respective positions, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on moral realism and moral anti-realism.  Be careful, however, not to moralize the debate over objectivity in ethics.  Plenty of nasty things have been done in the name of moral righteousenss, objectivitism and universalism and plenty of moral anti-realists are decent people.  It won't work to reject moral anti-realism on the grounds that you think Evelyn is a mean person.  That's just an ad hominem attack.

Critical Thinking about "Sicko"

Some people regard Michael Moore's documentaries as insightful and truth-telling commentaries on matters of political significance (gun control, the war on terrorism, corporate greed, capitalism) while others regard his "documentaries" as liberal propaganda. Because his films are controversial they make excellent subject matter for critical thinking exercises.  You can watch "Sicko," Moore's film on health care, on YouTube.com.

To use the film as subject matter for a critical thinking exercise write a review of the film that evaluates the viewpoint or argument presented in it and critically evaluate it for errors of fact, fallacy or logical contradiction.  Make sure to accurately characterize the position presented in the film otherwise you may open up your own evaluation of the film to errors of fact, fallacy or contradiction.   You might begin researching the film's claims by considering some of the movie's controversy in the media.  You can find video clips of Moore on CNN debating the merits of the film, more evidence to support the film's claims on Moore's website, and John Stossel also did a segment on the film.

Thank You For Smoking, Critical Thinking, and Informal Fallacies

Thank You For Smoking is a pretty entertaining movie, but it's also good material for a critical thinking and logical reasoning exercise.  You can use it to discuss the difference between sophism and logical reasoning, critical thinking about media, and as an informal fallacy identification exercise.  After you've studied informal fallacies and some basic principles of logic screen the film and complete each of the following.  

1. Is Nick Naylor argue logically and evidentially or does he argue prudentially?  

2. Review the informal fallacies we covered.  See how many informal fallacies you can find in the movie.  Remember that in order for there to be a fallacy, a character must be making an argument and not all forms of expression are arguments.  Write down the name of the character that makes the argument, briefly summarize the argument, and identify the informal fallacy that is committed.  

3. Nick's job requires him to defend the tobacco industry's image and one of the things that threatens that image is the link between cancer and smoking cigarettes. Describe how Nick goes about challenging that claim.  Is there really a scientifically proven link between smoking cigarettes and cancer or is it a legitimate scientific controversy.  

4. Are the debates over global warming, evolution and intelligent design, and the biology of sexual orientation legitimate controversies or are they manufactured controversies created by what are essentially PR campaigns?  How might one distinguished between legitimate controversies and manufactured controversies?  Is there a Nick Naylor of global warming, intelligent design, etc.?  

Where Did John Galt's Ideas Get Us?

Here's the trailer for a movie based on Ayn Rand's book  Atlas Shrugged.

And, here's where John Galt's ideas got us.

American Casino movie trailer from Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on Vimeo.

 

Orgasm, Inc. Trailer

I just heard about this documentary on big phrama and female sexual dysfunction.

 

Killing and Letting Die in Repo Men

The basic premise of Repo Men is that companies finance organ transplants and reposes their property if people fail to make their payments.  It's a neat premise for a movie from a philosophical perspective because it raises the question of whether there's a distinction between killing and letting die or doing harm vs. allowing harm.  The repo men and the company they work for justify (or perhaps rationalize) their actions by appealing to this distinction and the fact that the people they allow harm to come to knew the terms of the contracts they signed to receive the funds to pay for their organ transplants.  This latter point raises the additional question of whether all contracts are morally enforceable even though people entered them by their own free will. Insofar as it raises some interesting ethical issues it's an interesting film.

Watchmen and Philosophy

I recently got a copy of Watchmen and Philosophy.  The movie is rich in philosophical themes from moral and political issues to the metaphysics of Dr. Manhattan.

Watchmen and Philosophy covers a lot of these issues.  But, one thing I really topics illustrated in the movie and discussed in the chapter on the "critique of pure superheros" is the misapplication or ideological use of various normative theories.  Is Rorschach a good example of a deontologist or Ozymandias a good example of consequentialist?  Ozymandias devises a plan that requires lying and the killing of innocents but brings about a greater good.  Rorschach refuses to think justice can be founded on a lie and he refuses to obey what he considers an unjust law.

Examined Life: A Review

Examined Life is filmaker Astra Taylor's second documentary about philosophy.  While the first, Žižek!, focused on a single thinker Examined Life is comprised of interviews with Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek, Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor.  If the film has a lead role it's filled by West whose interview takes up three chapters in the documentary and focuses on the important role courage plays in the philosophical life.  To paraphrase West, the examined life requires courage because it's often a scary think to engage in the practice critical, self-examination that's at the heart of philosophy as a way of life and form of inquiry. 

The other interviews focus on a range of moral and socio-political ideas from the ethics of spening money (Peter Singer) to revolution (Michael Hardt) to disability and interdependence (Judith Butler and (Sunaura Taylor).  Zizek's discussion of shit in the ideological sense is not only entertaining, but comes across more as coherent than in many of his written works.  In each interview these thinkers illustrate how their central ideas are relevant to the "real world."  Taylor does a masterful job of situating each thinker in a setting that provides a visual to go along with each thinker's ideas.  As somebody interested in philosophy and who has a strong desire to show how the discipline is relevant to issues beyond the Ivory Tower (FYI: They sold the ivory to make up for budget shortfalls), a documentary like Examined Life by Astra Taylor is a welcome addition to a growing body of documentaries about big ideas.  However, the film does have its shortcomings.  Two, to be exact.

The film focuses exclusively on moral and socio-political philosophy.  While I can understand the choice to focus on issues that easily show philosophy's relevance to real world concerns the failure to include any thinkers that deal with questions about other philosophcial topics like the existence of god, faith vs. science, the self or the mind-body connection seems like a serious shortcoming in terms of giving the audience a better picture of the breadth of philosophical topics central to the examined life.  While some these topics might be more abstact they are nevertheless the very sorts of issues that figure centrally in many peoples' worldviews and as such deserve inclusion.  The second problem, in my opinion, with the film is its political one-sidedness.  All the thinkers included in the film stand squarely on the Left.  In fact, in some ways, they basically all say the same thing altough they might use slightly different vocabularies to do so.  Philosophers, it is true, tend to lean Left as a group.  But, it should not have been too hard for Taylor to find one libertarian-capitalist to interview in front of a homeless shelter or welfare office.  Doing so would have provided a nice contrast and again helped show the breadth of philosophical concern.  All in all though, Examined Life is well worth the rental price of a DVD.  So, you should check it out if you're interested in the life of the mind.  I went to so far as to buy a copy.  I hope Peter Singer would approve.

BP Turns Down James Cameron's Offer to Add Badass Special Effects to Oil Spill Footage, Crappy Story Line

PALOS VERDES, Calif (Reuters) – Film director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron said on Wednesday that BP Plc turned down his offer to help combat the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing," Cameron said at the All Things Digital technology conference.

Cameron, the director of "Avatar" and "Titanic," has worked extensively with robot submarines and is considered an expert in undersea filming. He did not say explicitly who he meant when he referred to "those morons."

His comments came a day after he participated in a meeting at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington to "brainstorm" solutions to the oil spill.

Cameron said he has offered to help the government and BP in dealing with the spill. He said he was "graciously" turned away by the British energy giant.

via news.yahoo.com

Avatar sucked.  So, I'd probably turn him down too.