Do We Choose to be Victims?

Suppose that a crazed roof-top gunman picks you out of a crowd because of your bright orange T-shirt. You can be criticized for your sense of dress, but not for 'making yourself a victim' of the shooting. In getting shot, you became a victim. You didn't make yourself a victim.

I have heard it said that muggers and rapists know whom to prey on. Suppose that is sometimes true. Suppose that meekness, or timidity, or some other more subtle quality identifies an individual as a suitable target of such vicious crimes. Knowing this, there is something we can do to lessen to some extent the chance of our becoming victims. Assertiveness training might be some help, or classes in self-defense. It still does not follow that a person who suffers a violent assault is in any way to blame for 'allowing' themselves to be perceived as a victim.

It is a rather different question when a therapist finds himself having to deal with a client trapped in an abusive relationship, where the client regularly becomes the victim of their partner's violence. To assert emphatically that it is not the abused wife's fault that she is being beaten (more often than not, she has become convinced that it is somehow her fault) is not to say that she cannot be helped by therapy to find another way of being in the world, besides that of the helpless victim.

It is a truism that we are all potential victims. As the example of the roof-top gunman shows, we are all, ultimately, at the mercy of our fellow humans. It is also a truism that there are times in our relations with others when we have the opportunity to adopt the stance of 'the victim', or not to adopt that stance and accept our part of the responsibility for the things that happen to us. It is a false comfort to think that one has less power at one's disposal than is in fact the case. Instead of complaining, “Look what you did to me”, or, “Look what you made me do”, we can take assertive action. In that sense, psychology has something relevant to say to us all.

I look forward to your comments

Can the God Question Ever be Answered?

Is it really the case that such questions can never be answered? Even if it was the case that such questions could not be answered to everyone's satisfaction, is it not an important question? Should we not attempt to answer important questions? Is this not why we pursue philosophy?

Perhaps the problem is that there are too many answers that are no longer convincing. What changes in these answers is the idea of God. As we gain greater knowledge of reality, and as our mental capacities improve, we should be able to arrive at a better answer.

Many of the answers that have been given about God have their origin in mythology. Aristotle proposed a rational answer, based on the contingency of reality, but then he could not connect his idea of God to that reality. The problem was that he did not have the categories of process available to use in his explanation. He did not understand the world as the result of a process that extended over billions of years.

We now know that the cosmos and time were initiated in the Big Bang. We can trace the process that led from the Big Bang to the present. What we see is the self-organization of matter that ultimately produces a life-friendly planet, Earth. Then life begins, with a DNA program that enables it to mutate to fill all available ecological niches. Homo sapiens evolve and begin to form cultures. Human cultures are processes of self-creation. People make cultures and cultures make people. Humans develop in their intellectual capacities, and begin to perceive the Platonic moral oughts, forming moral cultures. Humans develop in creativity and goodness, becoming more like some aspects of their concepts of God.

So there appears to be a quite complex process, that began with the Big Bang. It appears to be a process of ever increasing freedom, from the determinism of the laws of physics to the total freedom of humans in relation to the moral law, which commands but cannot compel. It is also a process of ever increasing complexity. The Big Bang did not just happen. It had to be caused. By whom and for what purpose? Consider the evidence. A self-existent entity, a God, could be the key to understanding what is going on. Then again, maybe not.

Please post your name (optional), age and location in comments so I may determine whom my readers are. Thanks KC.

Is There Knowledge We Shouldn’t Seek?

There is a popular saying that 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' I am mentioning this at the start because I want to exclude this sort of response. That is not a reason for not seeking knowledge in the first place. If I know that the best I am likely to achieve in my knowledge seeking is insufficient to reliably guide my actions, then I should be aware of that fact and proceed with caution. 'A little knowledge' is dangerous only when we falsely estimate its size.

There are in fact two questions to answer: 1. Whether there is any knowledge which, as a matter of prudent self-interest, I should not seek. 2. Whether there is any knowledge which it would be morally wrong for me to seek.

1. Knowledge gives us the power to do things. If my plans rest on false assumptions, they are more likely to be frustrated than if they had been based on knowledge. It would seem to follow from this that knowledge can never be a bad thing for me. The more knowledge I possess, the more power I have to achieve my goals. However, we have to reckon on the psychological effect of certain kinds of knowledge, for example, the knowledge that one has only six months to live. A doctor may judge that it is not in a person's best interests to be told the truth about their state of health.

2. A person can be held morally culpable for not making sufficient effort to acquire knowledge of the facts, in cases where their actions have unintended bad consequences for others. It is not an adequate defense to say, for example, 'I didn't know that the brakes of my truck were faulty.' Ethics concern doing good things, and not doing bad things, and just as in the case of prudent self-interest, knowledge is necessary for successfully carrying out our intentions. However, as before, there seems to be cases where one can reliably predict the effects of our acquiring certain kinds of knowledge. One example would be the attempt to devise intelligence tests which could be used to determine possible differences between people from different racial groupings. It is a near-certainty that such knowledge would be put to a bad use.

I therefore see no contradiction in asserting the following propositions. Knowledge is good for the person who seeks it. We have a moral duty to ensure that we act out of knowledge rather than ignorance. Yet there are cases were, all things considered, knowledge is not good for the person who seeks it. And there are cases where, all things considered, we morally ought not to seek knowledge that is within our means to acquire.

I look forward to your comments

Why Didn’t Socrates Take the Chance to Escape?

In Plato’s the Apology, Socrates is defiant as anyone would be, who was convinced of their innocence. In his own eyes, he has done nothing wrong. If, according to the laws of Athens, he has committed any crime, then the laws are wrong — or at least badly formulated. In fact, the charges raised against him by his accusers are lies. In pursuing his vocation as a philosopher, he has created enemies, who have sought to destroy him by bringing the false charge of atheism. Finally, after the guilty verdict has been pronounced, Socrates turns on his accusers, asserting that they, and the Athenian Court, in convicting him, have committed a great wrong.

In the Crito, Socrates, in prison awaiting his execution, is offered the chance to escape, but turns it down, arguing that such an action would “harm the Laws of Athens.” Why should he care? The verdict of the court was unjust, he does not deserve to die. His answer is very simple. The fact that a wrong has been done to him does not make the action of escaping justice right. This is readily understandable, in the light of the principle which Socrates lived by: “It is worse to do wrong than to suffer it."

I look forward to your comments

Do Moral Laws Exist Independently of Us?

Think whether there has been any time in your life, or anything that has come within your experience, that raised the question whether right-and-wrong is something real, independent of the moral attitudes of this or that person, or group of people. That would be an example which illustrates the question 'whether moral truths exist independently of us'.

Let’s look at two examples.

Suppose there is a discussion on abortion. Those people who are against a law allowing abortion in cases where a pregnancy is unwanted are passionately against it, and think that abortion is a great evil. Those people who are in favor of 'a woman's right to choose' believe just as strongly that it is the anti-abortionists who are in the wrong. Is there a right answer to this question, in reality? How would we know? And how can we discover what that 'right answer' is?

Here's another example, which might seem to point in a different direction. Not so very long ago, slavery was thought to be morally acceptable. Nowadays, the vast majority of the people you are likely to meet would say that slavery is morally unacceptable. How did this change of view come about? Is it just an example of different groups of people holding different views? Or is it a case of something that really is wrong, although people at first did not accept that it was wrong, and only later came to see the error of their ways?

As always, I look forward to your comments