Aporia, Brigham Young University’s undergraduate journal of philosophy, is pleased to announce that spring 2012 issue will extent submissions until February 13, 2012. Aporia is dedicated to recognizing exemplary philosophical work at the undergraduate level. The spring 2012 issue will be published in both an online and print edition. Papers can be submitted to aporia.byu@gmail.com.

We are human beings, certainly. But we are also persons. Human beings form a biological kind, and it is for science to describe that kind. Probably it will do so in the way that the evolutionary psychologists propose. But persons do not form a biological kind, or any other sort of natural kind. The concept of the person is shaped in another way, not by our attempt to explain things but by our attempt to understand, to interact, to hold to account, to relate. The “why?” of personal understanding is not the “why?” of scientific inference. And it is answered by conceptualising the world under the aspect of freedom and choice. People do what they do because of events in their brains. But when the brain is normal they also act for reasons, knowing what they are doing, and making themselves answerable for it.

And at the end:

But the theory of adaptation tells us as little about the meaning of “I” as it tells us about the validity of mathematics, the nature of scientific method or the value of music. To describe human traits as adaptations is not to say how we understand them. Even if we accept the claims of evolutionary psychology, therefore, the mystery of the human condition remains. This mystery is captured in a single question: how can one and the same thing be explained as an animal, and understood as a person?

There is no God. Reality is what physics says (and evolutionary biology). There is no purpose to anything, anywhere. Never was, never will be. There is therefore no meaning to life. I’m here because of dumb luck. Prayer doesn’t work. There is no such thing as a soul. There is no freewill. When we die, everything stays the same except without us. There is no moral difference between good and bad, right and wrong. You should be good because it makes you feel better than being bad. Anything goes. Love is a solution to a strategic coordination problem. It’s automatic, programmed so there’s no need to go out looking for it. History has no purpose (see above) because the future is less and less like the past. Ditto economics. Technology makes predicting the future a guessing game and their rational choice theories are outrageously bad psychology.

Of course, the big problem most people start worrying over at this point is: then why should I care about other people, and doing the right thing? The reviewer answers on Rosenberg’s behalf:

But then, if there are no categorical imperatives (except linguistically) don’t abhorrent values become equal with decent ones? If there’s nothing in the naturalistic worldview to underwrite goodness then Hitler is equal to Gandhi. Rosenberg accepts this but says we shouldn’t worry. Rosenberg says we are all just hard-wired to be nice. Morals are for him a type of norm expressivism. There are facts paired to norms that form a core system that’s universal, shared as a kind of species bedrock. As a species we’ve evolved the same values. There are other facts then that these pairings interact with, local ones including eco systems. So Rosenberg argues that as a species we share the same values and and that all moral disagreement is about factual matters if it persists beyond clearing up background cultural things.

Well, that’s lucky for us. Or I guess I shouldn’t think of it as lucky. It’s just the way things turned out, and since they turned out that way, I end up feeling good about it. Had we evolved to lie, cheat, and steal — or if in the coming centuries, we decide to breed ourselves in that direction — then we’ll feel lucky about that too. I’m feeling better already!

I should say from the start that I feel genuinely honored to read them.  Students are unbelievably frank in their papers, often baring their souls and their own struggles for meaning and identity in quite profound and moving ways.

Of course, much of what I read in these papers is pretty predictable.  Most didn’t know what to expect from the class, and if they had expectations they got something different.  A lot of students talk about being confused and frustrated by the course, about not being quite sure what they should believe.  Others leave the course saying they feel even more convicted about whatever beliefs they held prior to the course (I have both atheists and theists express both sentiments).  Many found what they had already decided to find, some found something different, some are left not so sure about the task of looking at all.  Most did not change their beliefs, but many spoke of having a different relationship to their beliefs.  Many talked of being sheltered and were thankful that they got exposed to other ways of thinking about themselves and the world.

There are some very dramatic moments (“This course has completely changed my life and I definitely can’t say that about the other classes that I have taken”) along with plenty of mundane grinding through the material hoping to demonstrate breadth of coverage.  I am pleased to report that almost every paper I read (130 of them) included the word humility somewhere and almost all of the students say they are clearer and more rigorous thinkers for having taken the course.

Many students spoke of being warned by their parents and family of the dangers of studying philosophy.  The worry is always the same: that studying philosophy will destroy your faith.  That so many students have had this experience makes me realize that it sometimes takes an act of real courage, however small, to take a philosophy class.  Sure, for most it is just a depth humanities class and perhaps they find themselves in this one because it happened to fit in their schedule.  I’m not naive; the reasons for taking the course are usually not high-minded and grand.  But sometimes, sometimes, the reasons are noble and brave.

I thought I would cut out a few selections from some papers and comment on a few of them.  Here are some of my favorites from this term (selections from students are in italics).

“Patience is one of the main things Philosophers need, because deep thinking and developing theories and arguments take patience. That is one of the main reasons why I don’t really enjoy Philosophy is because it takes so much patience to understand. What Philosophers do is basically question every idea, and everything. It’s exhausting and scary to think so deeply about all those things. And most the time you are never going to get a straight answer to these questions, so it’s very frustrating. Although this class has given me a lot of respect for Philosophers, it has made me realize I could never be one. I don’t have the patience, or yearning to learn every detail about why things are the way they are. I would rather just not question things and accept them for how they are.” 

I love the brutal honesty of this passage.  And I should say that I do not find this passage at all depressing or discouraging.  She is right, philosophy is probably not for everyone.  She has learned a little something about the course content, has peered through a crack in the door to see a bit of a much larger world, but has decided not to walk through.  I am quite fine with that, really.  She is right that the philosophical life is, in a way, scary and exhausting.  Maybe not everyone can thrive asking the deep questions.  She still leaves the course, in my view, enriched.  She is aware that there is a deeper conversation to be had and she is, happily, not suspicious of that deeper conversation (in fact, in her paper she talked about how impressed she was by the great thinkers we read).  She has accurately apprehended one of the virtues necessary for the intellectual life (patience), but has chosen not to participate in it further.  I can imagine many worse outcomes than that.

Just so I don’t get accused here of being too selectively positive: while most students, thankfully, thought the course was rewarding and well worth their time, there were a few who did not share such happy reflections.  Compare the gracious flirtation but ultimate rejection of philosophy above with this one:

“With all due respect, I’m sure you’re a great professor with a wonderful brain full of tons of field advancing knowledge on the subject of philosophy. With that being said, I found your class to be a total and utter bore; I only attended the first month or so of class before resigning to delve into the material on my own time in my own way. Here is where I ran into another problem; the material also bored me to no recognizable end. It is while trying to read the material that I realized philosophy is not an area of academic interest that I would ever consider pursuing any further than this introductory course. It is my opinion that while these great minds were great no doubt, at the end of the day, they were still only minds with measly opinions.”  

Well then.  I guess you can’t please all of the people all of the time.  Happily, most students enjoyed the class enough to think that taking some more philosophy courses would be worthwhile and fun if their schedules allow.  A few other quick excerpts:

“Words cannot describe how long that [Aquinas] took me to understand.”  

One student described a breakthrough moment at the end of the term:  “Finally I had done it. I read something and instead of thinking ‘oh, that makes sense, I can see where he’s coming from,’ I questioned it. I was able to identify ideas and beliefs that I did not agree with and even more importantly than that I was able to find some reasonable arguments for why I did not agree.”   A number of students expressed a sentiment like this one, “So my lesson was in fact twofold: one should try to avoid accepting at face value any idea or so-called evidence that supports one’s preconceived notions, yet at the same time one need not feel forced to abandon these ideas or evidences the moment a counterargument is found.”  

My favorite papers are those where the students are clearly working themselves out.  Here is an example: “My problem is fear. Fear of the unknown. […] Most of the time I feel like I am just living my same comfortable life waiting for something to happen. I always feel as though I am just along for the ride and life going to throw at me whatever it wants. It is often hard to look past what is happening in the present and it is easy to get wrapped up in “life” and thinking our lot is hard. When really what we presently is just a mere illusion. I have learned from this class that it is up to me to make of my life and destiny what I want. I need to turn my whole self around to learn.” 

On a lighter note, it is always funny to read what students thought philosophy and philosophers would be like.  Some expressed this sort of a sentiment: “It never crossed my mind that we would be learning and discussion subjects that would be pertaining to human life.”  What a miserable job philosophy has done “marketing itself”, if these sorts of opinions have currency?!  And I particularly liked this view of philosophers, “I expected a professor who had bed-head every day, a shirt only half tucked in, someone who was kind of erratic.”