Friday Philosophy

Stop what you’re doing! It’s time to ponder the topics that really make your brain hurt (because we don’t do enough thinking here already). Last week, I asked students around campus to answer extremely frustrating philosophical questions. Get ready to furrow your brow and flip some tables, because Choate is getting deep.

First question: what is reality? Take a moment to figure out your answer.

Are you ready with a response? Upon hearing this question, people usually sat in awkward silence for awhile, then mumbled, “Reality is… what’s real?” After that realization, people felt more comfortable expressing their opinions. Karen Shure ’17 believed that reality is everything made of matter, or in other words, everything in the physical world that humans can measure. No one rejected this definition outright, but there was some debate about whether or not mental states should be included. Claire Stover ’17 believed that reality consists of experiences, and therefore that an individual’s thoughts cannot be included.

On the other hand, Bryce Wachtell ’17 believed that reality is closely tied to our consciousness. He explained that while we sleep, dreams are our reality, though they are temporary. Some other students, tired of debating the issue, resorted to Googling the word. Even the Internet’s definition was inconclusive: reality was either “the conjectured state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined” or “everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible.” The teachers are right—you can’t count on Wikipedia.

Next, I asked, “How do you define good and evil?” Now, I was expecting a unanimous answer: the terms cannot be defined because they are subjective. And while many students did believe this, others defined ‘good’ as something that benefited others. Grayson Brunjes ’18 explained, “Good is something that’s helpful to human existence.” He added that the impact of a good thing, no matter how small, is still relevant to society.

Wachtell had a slightly different opinion. “Good is acting with the best intentions to better yourself or others. Evil is doing the opposite of that. But everything is relative, so it depends on what scope you’re looking through.” So do good intentions make a deed good, or do good results make a deed good? Food for thought, thoughts for food.

Now, people got quite irritated when I inquired about souls. First, there was debate on what a soul was. People also had conflicting opinions about whether souls even exist. Some students, like Megan Diana ’17, believed that a person’s soul is “everything you are minus your body.” That definition means that a soul includes a person’s influences, experiences, and personality. Stover, Shure, and Wachtell all stated that a soul is a human’s consciousness and that it controls a person’s physical actions. “We know that we exist both physically and mentally, but we don’t know where they attach,” Wachtell elaborated. He considered the soul the embodiment of our physical and mental self.

However, the real conflict arose from the question: what has a soul? Sofia Esquibies ’17 thought that all living things have souls, including plants and non-human animals. Nathan Chang ’17 passionately asserted that plants do not have souls, as did Diana, who exclaimed, “Plants don’t even know they’re alive!” Gabby LaTorre ’17 agreed with both Chang and Diana, believing that a being can only have a soul if it is self-aware. LaTorre also believed that humanity’s superior intelligence is the reason why humans have souls; therefore, other animals do not have one. (Most dog owners disagreed.)

Whewphilosophizing is hard work. Let’s go watch Netflix and smell the flowers.

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