Given the scientific information in the linked article, re-evaluate an ethic of care as opposed to a universal and impartial ethic.
What do you think about the importance of relationships to an ethical life?
Is full Kantian or Singerian impartiality possible?
What about the Christian ideals of loving one's neighbor (but who is my neighbor?) and 'love one another as I have loved you' (but does that mean everybody?)?
Do you find David Wong's argument about human nature (based on Dunbar's Number) compelling?
This is more or less a free response blog post, but I expect some depth (i.e., at least a few substantial sentences) in your comments.
Dunbar's Number <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number>
What is the Monkeysphere? <http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html>
The importance of relationship to an ethical life are substantial I think. I think that both are possible but extremely rare and scarce. I think that I know about two people in my life who have ever shown Kantian or Singerian impartiality. I think this is so difficult to find because like shown in the article, people grow a special fondness and comfortableness around people they see more (monkeysphere).
ReplyDeleteI think that the Christian ideas of loving one another and all your neighbors means everyone. It is mostly saying to fight the idea of the monkeysphere. The golden rule or the Christian ideal basically is pushing you to not treat any persons differently just because you might not associate them in your monkeysphere.
Yes, I found David Wong’s argument about human nature very compelling. Compelling because it made a very valid point. I completely know what point he is trying to make. I can see how the “monkeyshpere” is in my life and others. Like if someone cut me off on the way to school and I didn’t know who they were, I would honk…. but if it was say… Mr.. binder, I probably would hold back on the honking. And there is the “monkeysphere”.
At EHS, students get out of their second period class and make their way to chapel, they come across every other student. They may wave and say hi, but what do they really know about them. They’ve heard one girl, “is a fake hippie” and the next guy, “is a player,” but they’ve never actually gotten to know them. Even though these students are told never to judge a book by its cover, they still do it. Then they get to chapel and sit with their very close friend group (or they used to be able to), where they know everything about each of them. The difference between the one student, their decided group of friends, and everyone else, is the effort to actually get to know someone.
ReplyDeleteThe Monkeysphere, along with Dunbar's Number, says that a person can only manage between 100 and 230 friends, an estimated 150 people. Each person can only remember, in depth, this certain amount of people. This is because, after a while, our brains become naturally uninterested and forgetful about the specific characteristics of large amount of people we meet. The Monkeysphere states that we “each have a certain circle of people who we think of as people, usually our own friends and family and neighbors”, but it really depends on our ethics to decide how we interact with others.
I somewhat disagree with David Wong, I believe that each person can have as many “acquaintances” as they want; it depends on how much you care to remember about them to decide if you want them to be their actual “friend”. I have friends that I see maybe once a year, but when we are together we act like we hangout everyday. It is important to pick the people you best comply with, and make them an actual loving friend, rather than to pick someone who is considered “cool”. Everyone is supposed to love their neighbor, but not everyone is their neighbor. The point is to respect everyone whether they are your friend, enemy, or even a perfect stranger. I agree with Singer’s impartiality because I believe everyone gets an equal chance. Someone make act weird on the outside, but be the funniest person I’d ever meet. It is ethical to give everyone a chance, and unethical to judge that person by his or her size, weight, hair color, skin color, or any other first-look judgment you can think of. Maybe you’ll have a Monkeysphere, or only meet 150 people in your lifetime, but you will always have the chance to welcome anyone as a true friend, it’s your choice!
I don't think you can possibly be completely impartial as a human being. Every person has feelings and desires, or as Aristotle thinks, an appetitive state. At some point you have to have a bias towards something. For instance, who do you donate to? Their are millions of charities out there, and it is irrational to believe that one could possibly be better than all the rest. In order to apply ethics to your life, you have to physically apply it to your life alone. What can you do in your society that makes you a better person? You have to re-examine what your society is. Is it Houston, Texas, the US?
ReplyDeleteIn your specific society, you should apply your Christian ideals. That is not to say that, when you are not in your regular location you drop these all together. Instead, you have to bring some of the major ethical principles you apply to your society with you. Maybe to you that is to not kill, or treat all with kindness.
I think David Wong is correct when he says that, as humans, we treat people outside of our social circle with different morals. I agree with Dunbar's argument that it is physically impossible to have the same emotional feelings towards my best friend as I do for a boy in Africa. He is not in my society, so I rarely think about him, or put his feelings into mind when I make decisions. I don't think you can physically care for yourself, and listen or react to everyone's needs in the world.
We are told to care about others and to be respectful. I grew up mourning for people I didn’t even know, but the truth is. I would be much more upset if my mom died than if the man that lives two streets down from me dies. It’s just a matter of caring for my family rather than who deserves my tears. I have more respect for my mom than my neighbor because my mom gave birth to me, raised me well, fed me, and loved me. I’m not saying that I’m not sad when other people die; I cried on September 11, 2001, but I think it was because of I was scared it was going to happen to me.
ReplyDeleteI think relationships are a huge part of my ethical life. My values growing up were based off of my parents. I am the closest to my parents, and I knew what they were doing was right, so I did nothing other than follow what they believed. Even the smallest things became somewhat ethical issues. For instance, my dad has washed his car every Sunday for as long as I can remember. So, when I got my car, I started washing it every Sunday too. It’s not really a matter of ethics, but it’s proof that we follow our surroundings and what we grow up around. Also, relationships are important to ethics because they can teach lessons. I learn from a bad friend’s mistakes, and also from a good friend’s deeds. I strive to be like the good people I spend time around, and strive not to be like the bad people.
Nevertheless, God must be a part of this discussion. I grew up learning in Sunday school not to throw chalk at Suzie just because her bow was a little bigger than mine, even though I preferred overalls to a dress and a bow. So, in a nutshell, I learned to “love my neighbor as myself” and to “treat others like I would want to be treated”, but how long is this line of people? I don’t have the brain capacity and emotional strength to cry for someone’s death even though I would want him or her to cry for mine. I treat my Monkeysphere like I would want to be treated. But, other than those people, I’m sure I care for a few minutes, and then move on with my life.
With all of this, I, therefore, agree with Wong’s argument. It is human nature to care more about those in our Monkeysphere than the other 99.999% of people in the world.
According to this article, the human mind does not have the capabilities to have a universal ethics. Each problem does not have a simple solution, and we must accept that we are one in millions and not one in a million in order to understand the society in which we live. As stated by David Wong, the monkeysphere limits the extremities of humanity so much that we cannot fully grasp the “humanness” of those outside of our day-to-day lives. With this theory, Singerian impartiality becomes out of reach. Singer advocates we must be aware and feel the needs of starving children across the globe, but according to Wong, we cannot comprehend those needs because to us, those starving children are inhuman. I believe that David Wong’s argument over the monkeysphere is, indeed, very compelling. So much of our world and society can be explained using his theory. For example, the fact that we do not feel guiltier over helping the starving children can be explained by the fact that it does not matter to us because they are outside of our sphere. In this theory, relationships become exceedingly important because we must form them with those who we wish to include inside of our sphere. If we do not have a personal relationship with someone, we are bound to not think as highly of them and therefore not regard them with the same moral standards we have for those within our own sphere. As far as Christian ideals are concerned, we still have to keep our neighbors in mind. Though we do not see their whole person, we must regard their character with compassion. Even if it is not possible to literally love everybody in the same way, we should at least attempt to love humanity as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI believe that relationships are one of the most important parts of leading an ethical life. Through each of our relationships, we reveal our personalities to the other person, along with our ethics being a large part of our personality. Most people, unless you have some kind of issue going on, tend to be nice to people they have relationships with and treat them well. The article argues that there are only so many people you can have in your "monkeysphere", i would call it a relationship circle, before you don't really care what happens to the other people outside of that group. I would have to disagree with this.
ReplyDeleteThere are no set boundaries on who we should care about in our world in order to be considered an ethical person. I believe that in order to have a balanced ethical standpoint, we need to be somewhere in between the tow philosophies of Kant and Singer. We cannot go around just looking out for ourselves or trying to save every mistreated person in the entire world. Instead we can just do what we can with what we have. This means helping other people around us, doing this would make a large impact in and of itself. I do believe that the Christian idea of "loving your neighbor as yourself" is a good ideology to have when it comes to ethics. Just because people are not part of my "monkeysphere" does not mean I will refuse to care about them. Yes, I would probably care more if my own mother died than someone I didn't know, but we should all treat each other equally. Can we really say that just because someone is more sorry for the loss of another than you are yourself, they are a better person? Not at all.
While David Wong's argument about human nature is a very interesting one, I respectfully disagree with his ideas of ethics. I think most people have a hard time caring for others that they do not know, like starving kids in Africa, but would help them if they were given the opportunity. Most of the reason we cannot help or care about people outside our monkeysphere is because the world is a very big place. We can't help the people living in poverty half way across the world as easily as we can help our next door neighbor carry groceries to her front door, but humans are still wired with the care and compassion we use every day to care about others rather than just ourselves. Even that guy we give the finger to on the highway.
As much as I don’t want to agree with David Wong, I think he is right. Sadly, we don’t really care about anyone outside of our “monkeyspheres.” You can try to argue against that but you do something to prove it everyday, without even knowing it. Some of his examples were stealing cable, or celebrating when a restaurant forgets to charge us for something. Isn’t this just the same as stealing from an old lady? I mean the same old lady could be working at the cable company you stole from and could lose her job over too much stolen cable. This pretty much sums up the importance of relationships to an ethical life. Our relationships with people in our own “bubbles” are what matter the most to us because those are the people we know, the people we’ve learned to care about the most. So it only makes sense that we are going to care about their wellbeing over the wellbeing of a stranger. We haven’t learned to care about that stranger because we do not know them.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, as sad as this may be it is not possible for every single person to care as much about children dying in Africa or China as much as our sister or brother that was dying. We know our siblings on a personal level and have grown up with them. They are our blood. We don’t know these people in different countries so it is impossible to care about their death as much as the death of our siblings. The personal level is what makes us not care as much. We don’t know personally. I mean it’s not like you would have a funeral for a child who died in Africa that you didn’t know, but you would have one for your sibling if they died.
The Christian ideas of loving one’s neighbor and loving one another as God has loved you are hard to tie in to this article because Wong is saying this is impossible. Maybe he’s right. There are over six billion people on earth. No one can sit here and tell me that you actually love each and every one of them as much as you love your mother or father or brother. Sorry, but Wong is right, it is impossible.
I do find Wong’s argument compelling. It really makes me think about how much people truly care about others. Even if no one wants to admit, he is right. It is our human nature to care about those who we know, those in our “monkeyspheres” or our “bubbles.” As much as people want to say they care about strangers and people outside of their monkeyspheres, they don’t. There are too many people in the world and not enough of you to care about every single one of them.
If one would believe that an individual is incapable of broadening their care outside of this, so said, Money Sphere, then Universal Ethics would have problems existing. The same applies to Impartial Ethics because what would be the point of being impartial to random people if one just plain does not care, or have the capacity. So, therefore, without the capacity to care, Impartial Ethics do not apply. Universal Ethics is difficult to coexist with the idea of the Monkey Sphere because if everyone everywhere believed in the same ethical basis, then that would imply everyone could be connected, but the Monkey Sphere makes society impossible because an individual cannot expand beyond 150 others.
ReplyDeleteWithout relationships, there is no point to life if not to please others and oneself. But how would one be happy if they were alone? There would be no soul, no purpose to continue, nothing to head towards if there was not someone, or many someones', waiting at the end of the road.
According to the Monkey Sphere, Singer's ideology of being morally obligated to care about people far away is not realist if based on the idea of the Monkey Sphere. If taking the idea from Singer and applying it to the Monkey Sphere, one is morally obligated to those in the monkey sphere, but not beyond, because there is no basis of care outside it. Although the Monkey Sphere is universalizable, because it applies to every individual, it is not universalizable because it is nonfunctioning in the global scheme.
Christian values are hard to transfer to the Monkey Sphere, because caring about one's neighbor, if not in the Monkey Sphere, is impossible, and therefore, in a sense, Christianity is impossible because it cannot be make true in this sphere of thinking because unless one can differentiate between the neighbor's one cares about, Christian ideals cannot be true.
Human nature is interesting. Humans change, and their emotions and cares fluctuate, so would the Monkey Sphere. I almost completely agree with the limitations of 150 people in the sphere, but from my experiences, have found that people go in and out of my "sphere" and therefore believe that the Sphere is true, but wrong in the sense that it is absolute. Because, what if someone died or moved away and we lost touch? There provides at least two new places for another to be introduced into my life.
I believe that relationships are an extremely important part of human life. Without relationships there would be no way to enrich your own life. The idea that humans are only capable of 150 relationships in their "Monkey Sphere" I think is absolutely correct. The perfect examples are the garbage man and the teacher. Most people no matter what they say really do not have a good relationship with their garbage man. The absolutely do not think about what they are putting in their trash. I think that religion asks us to love our neighbors and treat them like we would treat God, and the monkey sphere still lets us do that. It is a mindset that can make us ethically better, even if we cannot actually achieve perfection. I believe that if you work as hard as you can then that is the success you are looking for.
ReplyDelete