Readings for Missing Socrates

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September 13, 2023 Corporate Cultural Power

  • What is a corporation?           
    • Corporations are persons under U,S, law.
  • Corporations in the economic market:
    • Employment and infrastructure development
    • Development of products and brands
      • Primary tools:
        • Invention/product development
        • Sales network
        • Advertising (happy people, blue skies, desired results)
          • Real or Imagined benefits (e.g., Prevegin)
          • Brand Loyalty (Coke, Bud Light)
          • Persuasive attractiveness (Hollywood stars, influencers)
          • Substitute for/replace individual or expert judgment
    • Take-overs and hedge funds (creative destruction)
  • Corporations in the Political Market
    • Profit vs Law
    • Profit vs. Social Consciousness or Ethics
      • Is there such a thing as a corporate social consciousness or ethics?
      • Does profit have a social consciousness? 
      • Who wants corporations to have a social consciousness?
        • Investors?
        • Politicians?
        • Public?
        • Beyond requirements of law, who would decide the ethics of a corporation? (Bud Light)
    • Funding Sources, public and private
    • Lobbying
  • Corporations in Social Media
    • Free Speech
    • Access to Media/Control of Media (Elon Musk, Rupert Murdock, owners of corporations)
    • Manipulation through feeds (you see what AI thinks you want to see)
    • Role of Competence in People

What is Responsibility in Corporations or in Individuals

August 30, 2023 Care, Discipline and Violence  

  • What is care?
    • “the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.” Oxford Languages, languages.OUP.com
    • All done within the defining context of a particular culture
  • What are the natures and the limits of “provision” as seen within a culture?
    • Care of the elderly?
    • Care of the young?
    • In general, care of the incompetent or those with limited competency?
    • Care of competent companions?
  • Care of the elderly: 
    • Medical care?
    • Nursing home care?
    • Why do this?
  • Care of competent companions
    • Minefield of competency (collaboration of unequal and/or varied competencies)
      • Marriage 😉
      • Employment
      • Social organization
  • Care of the young:
    • Socialization and self-control
    • Education: awareness of the discoveries of human culture
    • Vocational: ability of participate economically in a society
  • Role of discipline:
    • Elderly care
    • Care of young
      • Requirement of work, e.g., school hours, homework, training
    • Unequal and/or varied competencies
    • Work hours
  • When is discipline violence?
    • When competencies are ignored or overstated
    • When power/control substitutes for care
    • Neglect of the overall dignity of the person

August 16 Rights and the Common Good: In Medical Care

Preliminary Questions:

  • What do we owe one another?
  • What are rights?
    • Protection of the dignity of or the respect for a person?
    • Does having a right place obligations on others? What does it mean to protect or respect someone?
  • Are there natural rights (inherent to a person) or only legal rights (part of a legal system)?

Public Health: (Arguably an idea American’s can never agree on)

  • What is the common good?
    • What is this? (Did we ever agree?)
  • What is a public good?
    • Public good: Public goods are those that are available to all (“nonexcludable”) and that can be enjoyed over and over again by anyone without diminishing the benefits they deliver to others (“nonrival”). (International Monetary Fund)
  • Is public health a common good or a public good?
  • To what extent do rights limit or define the common good?

Medical Ethics questions:

  • Is public health a common good? A public good?
  • Vaccines:
    • Is it okay to require children to be vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella?
    • Is it okay to require covid vaccines of everyone? Of health care workers?
  • Access to medical care:
    • Is medical care a right?
  • Does having rights mean you are autonomous? 
  • What does “being autonomous” or “acting autonomously” mean?
    • Can you refuse treatment, as an expression of rights? Of the common good?
      • Life sustaining?
      • Non-life threatening?
      • Threats to public health?
      • Even if scientifically validated?
        • Does probability matter?
    • Can you demand treatment?
      • Treatment you can pay for (cash, insurance,…)?
      • Treatment you cannot pay for?
      • Scientifically unvalidated treatments?
    • Is informed consent always necessary?
      • Informed: understand the general consequences and their likelihood?
      • Understood thoroughly? Family agreement? Social agreement?

August 2 Readings Violence and the Common Good

What is violence? Physical? Psychological? Political? Mob? Sexual?

What is the definition of violence? 

Violence, an act of physical force that causes or is intended to cause harm. The damage inflicted by violence may be physical, psychological, or both. Violence may be distinguished from aggression, a more general type of hostile behaviour that may be physical, verbal, or passive in nature. Jun 29, 2023 Britannica https://www.britannica.com › topic › violence 

The World Health Organization’s definition of violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened[2] or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”[3]Krug et al., “World report on violence and health”Archived 2015-08-22 at the Wayback Machine, World Health Organization, 2002. 

Is the Britannica definition right? Is the distinction between violence and aggression right?  Is there a difference between the Britannica definition and the WHO definition? Does violence have to be an act, or can it be a threat?

Does the idea of a common good forbid violence? Why? How? 

Does the idea of a common good encourage violence? Why? How? 

Is majority rule a form of violence? Are minorities always or sometimes victims? Is the rule of law violent? 

Is nature violent?

Does nature’s violence justify human violence? 

July Readings for “My” Version of Truth  

Keep in mind the earlier discussion of Aristotle’s epistemology. 

But for this coming discussion: Plato: Republic:Divided Line and Myth of the Cave, 509d-518d             

Phaedrus: Soul: Allegory of the Chariot 246a-246c  

Texts are available on the web, provided by Project Gutenburg. But I will describe and summarize them when we get together.