Posts Tagged ‘philosophy’
With the story of a junior ice hockey player elbowing an opposing player, causing the victim on-ice convulsions as a result of a traumatic brain injury (not to mention a few missing teeth), it was inevitable that violence in sports — and, in particular, ice hockey — would again become headline material. 
The immediate result of the infraction, as expected, is that the offending player has been suspended indefinitely. Some administrators, players, and fans, however, seem to think that a league suspension is not enough, going to far as to expect — or even demand — criminal charges be brought on the offender. While there’s little doubt that such an offense in everyday life would result in a criminal investigation, violent acts in sports are often seen as untouchable to and even made permissible by law. Thus, in my opinion, there’s no better example of ethical relativism in mainstream society than the acceptance of violence in sports.
Ethical relativism is the philosophical concept which states that “different groups of people have different moral standards for evaluating acts as right or wrong.” Even more interesting to me is the fact that ethical relativism can also be found within the same group of people. That is, in my example above, in general western society sees fighting as unethical and illegal, and yet violence in sports is not only tolerated but, in some cases, encouraged or is the main action within that sport. The venue and purpose determines whether the action is ethical. That is the very underlying principle behind ethical relativism: the same action, under different circumstances, is viewed differently in terms of morality.
Bringing law into the picture makes ethical relativism and violence in sports a much trickier issue. In some sports, violence is the single principle in the sport. In boxing, for example, two consenting people engage in fisticuffs while others watch for entertainment. However, if two consenting people fight outside of, say, a bar (regardless of the level of intoxication), it’s likely those two people would be arrested and booked in jail, with further punishment being adjudicated by the judicial system. We could say the same for almost any other professional sport, too: ice hockey has fights every game, but the penalty is simply five minutes in the penalty box. Baseball, basketball, and football all have the occasional fight, but the penalties are generally in the thrown-out-of-the-game to suspension range. Regardless, in each of these cases the violent actions are tolerated on some level, and criminal investigations never come into play.
The question, then, is whether what happens within a sport should be considered outside of the law and outside of normal ethics (although some disagree), as is often the case. Violent penalties in ice hockey, such as slashing, kneeing, elbowing, roughing, and fighting are policed within the game. While some could say that the intent is what could trigger outside investigation and action, hockey has a penalty for that, too: “intent to injure,” which would, in everyday law, be called “assault.” The same could be said for baseball, for example when a pitcher throws the ball at a batter or when the base runner intentionally runs into or “spikes” an opponent. Should every intent to injure penalty therefore be investigated as a criminal action? It does seems to satisfy all three of the requirements for determining criminal action: ability, opportunity, and intent to commit the action.
Some cases have been investigated as criminal action. In 2004, then-Vancouver Canucks player Todd Bertuzzi punched opponent Steve Moore in the side of the head and landed on him, along with other players, resulting in a broken neck, concussion, damage to ligaments and nerves, and facial lacerations for Moore. Bertuzzi then found himself in criminal court, eventually pleading guilty to assault and was sentenced simply to probation, 80 hours of community service, and couldn’t play against Moore. Moore, since the incident, has never again been able to play hockey. Meanwhile, Bertuzzi has amassed over 300 penalty minutes, most of which it can be assumed were for violent actions. As the terms of his probation have apparently been met satisfactorily, it seems that the courts have chosen to be blind to the vast majority of violent actions within sports.
I don’t know what the answer is for the dichotomy between lawful and unlawful in terms of violence in sports, but I do believe it is a slippery slope should the courts become involved again with actions within a sport. While I might not personally agree with violence in sports, despite being involved in them more than a few times, myself, the involvement of the courts seems to be almost completely arbitrary considering the violent actions which are willfully ignored. Unless laws and normal ethics are applied to the actions within sports, the courts seem to have little precedence on which to rely when adjudicating in-game violent actions and determining adequate punishment. Unless the judicial system is willing to adjudicate all actions within sports the same as those that are outside of sports, they should leave adjudication where it belongs: the civil courts.
As an aside, and perhaps the topic of a future post, I wonder why the same relativism also seems to hold true for doping in sports. Criminal investigation has largely been contained to investigation of doctors and trainers for the dispensing of controlled substances, and much less against the players who have admitted using them for illegal purposes. It too is an interesting case of dichotomy between what we as society see as unethical and illegal (the taking of controlled substances for uses other than their legal intentions) and permissible (since the taking of controlled substances resulted in more public entertainment).
What if the free will we experience every moment of our lives was mere illusion? Being a causal determinist, I argue that all of life and its choices are actually simply culminations of progressions of physical and chemical reactions. While it at first seems absurd to question a part of life we encounter so frequently and so consciously, but, as René Descartes wisely began his First Meditation,
Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.
Therefore, it would be prudent of us to, when attempting to understand human thought and reason, also question at a very basic level what makes us act the way we do. It is through this exploration at a very basic level that led me to this conclusion: since our bodies are composed entirely of chemicals, and we know that chemicals go through processes and reactions, we can then associate our actions with those chemical processes. This is where my argument for causal determinism is based.
According to Robert C. Solomon, determinism is “the position that every event has a cause (including thoughts and decisions) and is fully governed by the laws of nature.” According to the view, since everything in the universe, including humans, is material of some sort, and materials have physical reactions, we too are wholly based in and guided by those reactions. Freedom and free will are simply illusions.
Before giving evidence of this position’s validity, I’ll first go through three other similar perspectives to rule out any confusion:
- Fatalism: in fatalism, actions happen because they are meant to happen, for some reason such as karma. Fatalism is different than determinism in that deterministic actions must happen due to their static physical qualities, while fatalistic actions happen because they are meant to happen by some other force.
- Predestination: predestination is the view that the world is predetermined by some being, and our lives are simply playing out the stories which will necessarily lead into the predetermined conclusion. While it would be fair to say that a deterministic view will lead to a conclusion that could have been determined, predestination invokes a deity or being that oversees the storyline.
- Soft determinism: another view is soft determinism, also called compatibilism, which holds that freedom still exists due to the fact that we can never know all of the causes which have brought about the current action. This view concludes that we are free due to certain “free actions,” such as by rationality, without “external compulsion,” or by some other non-induced action.
Even though soft determinism fits well with our consciousness and the seemingly ever-present ability we have to make decisions through our own rationales, it’s my position that causal determinism is the reality of our nature and everything else in the universe.
For evidence of causal determinism’s validity we needn’t look any further than psychoactive drugs. While many would argue that the human mind isn’t material, psychoactive drugs have great effects on the mind, our perceptions, and our thoughts. For example:
- Major depressive disorder is thought to be based on a lack or imbalance of one or more of the monoamines (serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine). Antidepressant drugs work by increasing the levels of such monoamines. Therefore, depression in this instance and its psychological implications are chemically-based.
- Lysergic acid diethylamide, otherwise known as LSD, has visual effects, as well as distortions of the perception of time. LSD works by affecting G protein coupled receptors, including dopamine and adrenoreceptor subtypes.
In each of these cases, and many more that are similar to these cases, it is a chemical which is having an effect on the chemicals in our brain. The reactions between those chemicals in our brain change the way our mind works, perceives, and, in turn, affects the way we interact with the outside world. My evidence for the validity of causal determinism is, simply, because chemicals interact and influence our mind, our mind is therefore made of chemicals. It follows, then, that because our mind is simply a culmination of physical and chemical processes, we are no different than anything else in the universe: humans, animals, rocks, lightning, plasma, ice, and photons, all just physical and chemical processes acting in the strict governance of the laws of nature.
It’s not the nicest view, but it is one for which I find clear and unequivocal evidence. In future posts I’ll explore a casual deterministic perspective of law and punishment, learning, and other implications.
One of the more interesting paradoxes comes to us from Zeno via Aristotle: the dichotomy paradox. The paradox is quite simple, but perhaps best stated by Aristotle in his Physics, 239b11:
The first [paradox] asserts the non-existence of motion on the ground that that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.
Or, said in plain English, in order to traverse a certain distance, you must first reach its half-way point. As the paradox infers, you must then traverse that distance’s half-way point again. And again. And again, ad infinitum. You can mathematically represent this by (via Wikipedia)
So you can see immediately that should you have to first reach the distance’s half-way point before reaching the goal, you’ll never actually reach the goal.
There are some proposed solutions, only one of which I find particularly convincing. But let’s go through some of the losers first.
Aristotle himself argues that you may be able to find the solution by also having to divide time as you do distance. Therefore, you have 1/2 the time to traverse the 1/2 of the distance, 1/4 of the time to traverse 1/4 of the distance, and so on. I don’t find this solution even somewhat convincing (although he believed Zeno would be satisfied), although I do find it incredibly interesting that, perhaps for the first time in the history of humanity, we see time and distance — or space, if you will — as one. That wouldn’t be mathematically proposed until Hermann Minkowski and Albert Einstein proved it later in his theory of special relativity. So, while unsatisfactory, it’s interesting nonetheless.
Diogenes the Cynic (via Simplicius) states that because we see that people can indeed traverse distances, therefore they must somehow be able to traverse the infinite divisions of the distance. But, as Zeno points out, perceptions can be deceiving, and not all that we see is necessarily true. But, in my opinion, he’s on to something.
The solution I propose is the same as another argument from Aristotle. Perhaps Stanford University‘s Metaphysics Research Lab puts it best:
In his response Aristotle drew a sharp distinction between what he termed a ‘continuous’ line and a line divided into parts. Consider a simple division of a line into two: on the one hand there is the undivided line, and on the other the line with a mid-point selected as the boundary of the two halves. Aristotle claims that these are two distinct things: and that the later is only ‘potentially’ derivable from the former. Next, Aristotle takes the common-sense view that time is like a geometric line, and considers the time it takes to complete the run. We can again distinguish the two cases: on the one hand there is the continuous run from start to finish, and on the other there is the run divided into Zeno’s infinity of half-runs. The former is ‘potentially infinite’ in the sense that it could be divided into latter ‘actual infinity’. Here’s the crucial step: Aristotle thinks that since these times are geometrically distinct they must be physically distinct. But how could that be? He claims that the runner must do something at the end of each half-run to make it distinct from the next: she must stop.
What Aristotle is proposing here is that traveling is continuous, while Zeno’s dichotomy paradox relies on there being some ceasing of motion by the person traveling the distance. Said simply, if you’re traveling to a goal, you needn’t stop at each half-way point, but rather you traverse right over it and every subsequent half-way point. The dichotomy paradox is only applicable should you have to discontinue your motion at each point.
So really this paradox, like many others, can find its problem — and not really a solution — in a misplaced, misperceived, or just a completely wrong premise. This paradox isn’t any different, as its premise infers that you must, like distance, divide the motion of the traveler. But, as we and Diogenes the Cynic see every single day of our lives, people do reach their destinations, and they never once must stop at each half-way point of their intended target.