My wife likes to play bridge. It is a game that involves two opposing teams of two. It is the weak member of the team that determines the level of play as the better player cannot do any more then what the weak play does.
So it shouldn't matter if someone brings along a bridge pro to be their partner? Everyone can learn from the pro and theoretically, the pro cannot really be an unfair advantage as the weak partner is the one that determines the level of play. But somehow, it does not feel right.
Concern parents hire tutors to help with their children's academic progress. Is this unfair to other children who are expected to manage on their own?
Examination bodies publish past exam questions which are used as reference for people preparing for the exam. Is this unfair to others who study for the sake of acquiring knowledge rather than passing exams?
How is fairness in sports and games determined?
I understand that there is a lot of scientific research going into fishing lures. The scent, color, movement of the lure in the water, are all well researched as fishing is big business. How "fair" is it to buy one of these lures to go catch fish? How much credit can one claim when the poor fish goes for this super attractive lure?
If boxing is separated into various weight classes to make the opponents better matched, then why is basketball not separated into various leagues based on the player's height?
What is the difference between performance enhancing drugs and plain good nutrition for athletes? Are vitamins and other supplements okay so long as they are not too effective at improving the athlete's performance?
Is the practice of identifying future Olympians early in their childhood and dedicate their youth to training for Olympic performance fair to other "amateur" athletes? How much training is an unfair amount of training for an amateur athlete?
In law enforcement, is it "fair" for radio announcers to broadcast where the police has set up speed checks to catch speeding motorists? It has the intended effect to have less speeder be caught but it also slows down motorists who may have otherwise driven faster.
Should radar detectors be allowed?
Similarly, my gps warns me of intersection camera ahead presumably so I will avoid getting a ticket for running a traffic light. Is that reducing the practice of running traffic lights at the camera locations but at the expense of more light running at the intersections with no cameras?
How are these practices not considered obstruction of justice?
Shouldn't we be on the side of the police who is trying to help all of us?
What is the foundation we use to judge fairness?
I guess you are discussing this topic right now and I am missing it. Sigh! Fairness. Is it wired into us instinctually like sex and disgust? Is it like justice? Studied as a 'social problem' from three levels. Immediate environment with anchors and scales (context). Intrapsychic where body and sex matter. Ethic of caring vs. Ethic of Justice. Global environment where trading regimes and history matter. CL
ReplyDeleteHi there, I am very sorry if I am posting this comment in the wrong section. I apologize for not making it last week, I had a minor dental operation, but due to that, I am still enunciating like Piglet; I am certain no one will have the p-p-p-pp-pp-patience to hear me talk. Hopefully, I will come on August 1st. This is a comment on last week’s discussion of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘fragility of goodness’:
ReplyDeleteThe Stubbornness of Goodness –
I very much agree with Martha Nussbaum’s concept of non-judgmentalism of the complexities, inexplicable vagaries in gratuitous circumstances, and of the imperative need to express, acknowledge, and address the vulnerability, impassioned nature and “goodness” of our human condition with compassion, ingenuity, and the courage to engage in life’s calamities. However, I do not believe the state of morality to be a fundamental state of fragility, rather the very opposite: a state of recalcitrance. Very often, it is not the contingency of circumstance, but rather, a recalcitrancy to surrender values we have attached to the contingency of circumstance, that brings such a state of “fragility”. Here, in more detail, is what I mean:
Most of our “fragility” comes from philosophical, spiritual, or personal quagmires around the parameters of “freedom”. For instance, if, postulating natural phenomena and human activities as a dynamic system of self-organized criticality (SOC): a system of simple properties which progresses to an emergent complexity, reaching a point of criticality between equilibrium and chaos; ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Domino’ effects are characteristic of such systems in which small perturbations can have either local or unpredictable, system wide impacts. Such amplification of possible consequences in small actions extends the limited degrees of freedom in individual components through complex laws; in which, indeterminism to a certain arbitrary extent at times project a mistaken prestige of free will. This prestige of free will would occasionally induce false incompatibilist assumptions that it is indeterministic with natural phenomena and human activities, leading to arguments of infinite regress and a fallacy of denying the antecedent, as often organic and social networks have causal relations; mutatis mutandis, false compatibilist assumptions that free will is deterministic is a fallacy of affirming the consequence as often organic and social networks act independently. The tendency of a projection bias often embodies unrelated corporeality with extensions of our transcendent needs, those needs often manipulating limitations and our own due responsibility.
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ReplyDeleteAs well, with Daniel Kauffman argued, system 2 - the part of our minds we identify as “us”, is often powerfully, and even beneficially influenced by the workings of system 1- the unconscious thinker. Yet, it is not impossible to consciously will the direction or diffusion of our emotions. When, a symbiotic unity can not be arrived between the conscious, intellectual, the persona, ego personality, the secure and the unconscious, uncertain, Jungian personal, archetypal shadow and the insecure, life can become a game of chess: an “addiction” to voluntary moves upon the board of life, setups that give definite consequences, finite endings; a sense of meaning. In addition, like the illusions of external agencies proposed by Daniel Gilbert, when we underestimate the power of random processes to create order and our brain’s intrinsic resilience to embrace the most “fortunate”, rewarding views for the adaptation of trauma, we often give credit to extraneous sources such as the Greek Moirai (the fates), goddesses that threaded the ineludible fate of man, the Algea (grief, sorrow, distress), spirits and bringers of pain and suffering of both body and mind, and even Zeus, the King of Gods, as the sole, dependable entity capable of emancipating mortal “karma and samsara”. In our existential, and frequently pernicious attempts to capture a understanding of our mastery, limitations, longevity, mortality, fairness, prejudices, wilfulness, ineptness and the residual freedom left, we often become stressed, disillusioned, embittered, and at worst, psychotic: as with Martha’s metaphor of Hecuba’s canine metamorphosis, the refusal to participate in society from perceived injustice can lead to a complete loss of external reality. Like the myth of Icarus and his fashioned wings of wax feathers, our high, ecstatic ascensions for trust, love, “goodness”, or low, at times depressive avoidance of what the Buddha termed dukkha - desire and attachment, can grow too close to the sun, melting our feathers or too close to the sea, saturating our flight and weighing us down; crashing or drowning into the waves. As Dr. Stephen Diamond mentions in his blog, when conflicting or cataclysmic transmutations in events associated with our beliefs uproot our naïve confidence in humanistic, natural, and religious ‘Weltanschauungs’ (worldviews), we are thrown into the tragedies of “human and cosmic evil”. We are left feeling very fragile, not only because we feel defrauded, victimized, and abandoned, but fragile because we feel handicapped of extrapersonal immersion to extrinsic reality, of participating in the enigmas and mysteries of life, of escaping our intrapersonal solipsism; we feel fragile because we do not wish to feel fragile.
ReplyDeleteMeden Agan –
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be an ubique existential defence mechanism against fear and anxiety of the unknown, nothingness, meaninglessness, and death. Yet, as existential - humanist and psychoanalyst Rollo May had commented: “Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all”; for it is only in the appreciation of solitude and “the mystery of being” can there be a capacity to wonder. Likewise, in the psychology of Levy Bruhl’s participation mystique and collective representation, there rests the primordial notion where the personality, and subjective is not distinct, but shares in a symbolic topography, or archetypal identity with the collective and objective. This view is shared with what Cambridge Platonist Henry More termed ‘spissitudo spiritualis’ – an ‘immaterial’ materialism, idealistic, universal forms that inform matter; what Henri Corbin referenced as the ‘imaginatio vera’, the active imagination which transcends fantasy; and Jung described as ‘synchronicity’, a “meaningful coincidence” of “acausal events”. The fear of the unfortunate, unforeseeable, and at times destructive nature of uncertainty and the unknown, leads to resistance, seclusion, unoriginality, the loss of uniqueness and an ultimate attitude of despondent boredom. Though, as emphasized by Gabriel Marcel and Rollo May, we will never fully demystify the unfamiliar, but will only perpetually strive for freedom, and be a receptacle to what is offered. It takes, such, the courage of Odysseus and Dante’s ‘katabasis’; the equanimity and flexibility of Dimitra - acting like wheat when the wind blows; and the Three Jewels of Taoism: Compassion - recognition of interconnectedness, moderation – non-materialism, and humility – living authenticity; to truly be mindful, observant, and participative even in life’s often Sisyphean caprices. So then, we can, and often should embrace, create, and even indulge in the pleasure of “goodness”, but not without the wisdom of ancient Greeks inscribed on the temples of Apollo: Menden Agan – Nothing in Excess.
I am positive if I write anymore, my comments will be marked as spam. So here are my ideas summarized in a Koan, for next week’s topic on ‘balancing attention between the needy versus the gifted’:
If the body and mind were both mirrors, what is the reflection when one looks into the other?
Thank you truly and have a lovely discussion!
Kind Regards,
Sandra