Vitanuova for 2001 July 3 (entry 3)

An idea

I'm tempted to send written questions to some people I know who are quite different from one another, requesting written answers, and then to publish them on my web site side by side.

This is different from on-line debates because the people wouldn't be arguing against each other and wouldn't even have an opportunity to argue against each other at all. They'd just be expressing their views, and these views would appear side by side.

The kinds of questions I'm thinking of are things like

• Process or product? :-)
• Nature or nurture?
• What is love?
• Why do people commit crimes?
• Why do people have such a diversity of religious beliefs?
• What kinds of considerations figure in good moral decisions? (Is there such a thing as a good moral decision? Is it typified by being informed by a particular kind of consideration?)
• How would you solve the mind-body problem? (Does the mind-body problem exist? Has anyone solved it?) Does consciousness exist? Do you feel confident that other humans have it? How about other animals?
• What kinds of obligations do people have to one another? How about to non-human animals?
• What are the biggest problems in the world today?
• What do you spend the most time worrying about?
• Do you trust the police? When would you involve the police in a situation? When would you help the police investigate a situation, if they wanted your help? Do you feel differently about different police forces (LAPD, FBI, BATF, BART Police, UCPD, DEA, Secret Service, SFPD, CHP)?
• Did you enjoy junior high? How about high school? What made your school experiences particularly good or bad? Do you typically blame/credit other students, teachers, school adminstration/facilities/institutions, the history/demographics/context of your schools, or yourself?
• Is there such a thing as a meaning of life?
• What periods or movements in Western history do you think are particularly enticing, interesting, inspirational, important, or worthy of study?
• What periods or movements in Western history do you think are particularly mistaken, harmful, or emblematic of error?
• Do you care about where you live?
• What is the connection between knowledge and virtue? Is it logically possible for a person to do something he or she really knows is wrong? Do you distinguish different kinds of "knowing"?
• To the extent that virtue is some kind of knowledge, is it a knowledge that be imparted, and can it be imparted to everyone?
• Are some cultures or cultural trends, syndromes, or tendencies better than others?
• Under what circumstances does it make sense to you to evangelize for things? For what kinds of things? What kinds of evangelism by other make sense to you, and what kinds don't? Do you ever feel evangelical or practice evangelism? About what?
• Does it make sense to you to say that a society is failing or behaving badly (aside from cases when the society falls apart completely)? What kinds of things do you think can properly be called "social problems"? Is a society (sometimes) bad because it has particular social problems, or only because of the presence or absence of some kind of social behavior? (What kind of social problems can make a society bad, or, in general, what kind of social problems "reflect on" a society or on its character?)
• Do you think Nnnnnn is a hero, a villain, both, or neither? (Obvious sources of controversy in American history -- Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, John Brown, Haymarket folks, Lincoln, Malcolm X. Hmmm, how about Martin Luther? Not King, the original Martin Luther.)
• Is there personal survival after death? Does anybody know this (aside from, perhaps, people who have already died)?
• What is democracy? Is it good (sometimes, always, never; absolutely, in comparison to alternatives)? Do you think the term is commonly abused, and, if so, who is it who abuses the term?
• What kinds of questions are meaningful? What kinds of questions have a right answer? What kinds of questions have a right answer that some people can know? What kinds of questions have a right answer that some people can know and can teach some other (willing) people to know?
• Which of the following exist? A pen (go find a pen so that it's a particular pen); the idea of a pen; the number 7; the fact that 2+2=4; truth; beauty; justice; happiness; love; countries; national borders; the law; unicorns; the color green. How about truth versus the idea of truth, beauty versus the idea of beauty, justice versus the idea of justice, love versus the idea of love, the number 7 versus the idea of the number 7? Do all ideas exist? Do all things about which there are ideas exist? Is there such a thing as a false idea (as opposed to a false belief or false statement)?
• Do you agree with a particular school of thought in the history of mathematical philosophy? (I might have to mention some of them for the benefit of people who haven't heard these arguments...)
• What social classes exist in America? (Are there any?) Who belongs to each? Do members recognize themselves or others (as members of social classes or as something else)? How can people move between them?
• Are families (nuclear or extended) fundamentally good (or necessary), overrated, or just one of many arrangements that could work well? (Are there any other arrangements that are as good as families? Many?)
• How about marriage? (Same questions as above.) Same-sex? Plural? Should civil marriage exist at all? (I.e. should a government recognize some things as marriages, and not others? Should marriage be, as it currently is, different from a private contract? If not, should contracts with the same legal effects as marriage be legally allowable, as they currently are not?) If so, what arrangements should be recognized as marriages? What should legitimate reasons for the dissolution of a civil marriage be?
• Would you be (or would you have been) more or less likely to get married if the rules for civil marriage were different? (E.g. if no-fault divorce didn't exist, if you were allowed to marry people of the same sex, if alimony/custody rules were different from what they are, if it were more socially acceptible and legally convenient to "marry" for a term other than life, if marriage were in some way more connected with or less connected with child-rearing...) Is there a possible "marriage reform" that you personally would really like (i.e., that would make marriage much more appealing to you)? Is there one you would really dislike (that would make marriage much less appealing to you)?
• Is there such a thing as a social contract and are you bound by one (is a social contract the ultimate reason that you shouldn't do certain things which otherwise would be legitimate for you to do)?
• Is there such a thing as something everyone should know? Is this for practical reasons (people will be harmed if they don't know X), for moral/aesthetic reasons, for other reasons?
• Is there a responsibility to know about particular things? Is there a responsibility to go to school? Why does it stop at a particular age, and what age should it stop at? Are societies without truant laws failing in some way? How about societies without free compulsory public education? Before free compulsory public education was invented, were societies deficient because they didn't have it?
• Should schools (at what level?) have a particular curriculum? How should it be determined what is part of that curriculum?
• Should people major in something? How come people in Russia and Germany start an academic majoring (so to speak) around junior high but traditional liberal arts students didn't major (so to speak) in anything at all? Why do people in America choose majors in college, but not before (and not later, like grad school)? Are there practices in American junior high or high school education which are related to majoring?
• What is literacy? Who is illiterate? How do you feel about phrases like "scientific literacy", "mathematical literacy", and the recent "computer literacy"? Do these terms bother you? Do you think that what they refer to can be said to be as important as reading? How about "numeracy"?
• Do you like to speak about certain things being "invented" or "discovered"? Does it matter what kind of things?
• What is the status of children? What responsibilities do biological parents have to children? (Absent an agreement to the contrary, are the responsibilities the same for each gender of parent?) What rights do children have against their parents? What kinds of things is it not wrong for parents to try to force their children to do? What kinds of things is it not wrong for children to try to do, knowing that it's contrary to their parents' will? Is it wrong for children to run away from their parents, knowing this is against the parents' will (always, never, or under certain circumstances)? Is it wrong for other children or other adults to facilitate this?
• Can you do wrong in how you treat yourself? Is it possible that volenti fit iniuria? Are you doing wrong to yourself or others if you don't live up to some kind of potential, or if you "drop out" of a society you were previously heavily involved in?
• Can people own land (aside from on account of Cal. Civ. Code, Division 2, Part 1, Title 2, Chapter 1)? Suppose some people go to live on Mars; can they own parts of Mars (and which parts, and how)?
• Are people making progress in general? (Toward what?) Is there a trend according to which things are getting better or worse in general? What is the most significant way in which things have been getting worse recently?
• Is it good or bad to take psychoactive drugs? Under what circumstances?
• What do you think about recent theories about learning styles? Learning disabilities? Multiple intelligences? Are the attacks on traditional education as unresponsive to human learning diversity justified, or are these attacks just masking other problems?
• Do you think there is such a thing as general intelligence? Is this a myth (perhaps a myth that was made up to serve particular interests)? Was a particular kind of intelligence enshrined as "general" when it wasn't really general? Do you think that most people have a lot of intellectual potential that they aren't using?
• Do you sympathize with a particular philosophical moral theory? Has that theory ever helped you make an important decision?
• What does it mean to be at war? Are there different kinds of wars? Who can be at war? What things are acts of war? What do you think are the most common causes of wars of the sort commonly reported by the press? Do you think there are other things that should be called wars that are not reported that way?
• Do you think it's important to do something for a living that's meaningful to you? Do you expect that it will be possible? Did most of your friends have that expectation when you were growing up? (Also, what counts as meaningful? Is it necessary or sufficient for work to be interesting? Necessary or sufficient for it to be useful and necessary? Necessary or sufficient for it to "change the world" or "have an impact" in some way? Necessary or sufficient for it to be original and accomplish something new? Something else?)
• Aside from its application to any particular case, does the ius gentium make sense to you? How about the terms of various famous treaties that get studied in history classes? Do they make sense to you in terms of stating principles you think are good, or just in the sense of constituting a practical solution to a particular historical conflict or conflicts? (Is there a distinction between these two in international relations?) For that matter, is there such a thing as international law that comes from a source other than the hegemony of particular strong nations? Or does what's called international law just reflect the interests of powerful nations at a particular moment? (I won't ask you about the jurisdiction of war crimes tribunals formed immediately after World War II -- although this is a famous source of controversy -- but perhaps about war crimes tribunals that are being convened today.)
• What are universities for?
• What do you think of when you hear the word "natural"? Do you tend to call things natural to mean that they're good? Or that they're bad? Or that they're beyond good or bad? Are there any exceptions? (Is there some context in which "natural" has very different connotations for you?)
• Are you bothered if someone appropriates a social institution for what seems to you like a purpose or use different from its original purpose? (One example for some people is gay marriage, but it is difficult for most people I know to see this as a relevant example. But the point is that some people think that gay marriage is a betrayal of the meaning of marriage -- either in the sense of a travesty or in the somewhat different sense of a logical contradiction in terms. Although it's likely that you don't feel this way about same-sex marriage -- if you do, you're supposed to have said so in response to an earlier question -- are there things about which you feel in similar ways? That is, are there things that people want to do with or in institutions you care about, or in or through traditions you care about, that strike you as a travesty or as a contradiction in terms? Do you ever feel that an institution is being misappropriated? How about an ideal? Which ideals do you think are most often misappropriated?)
• Is an institution or a practice potentially devalued by the actions of people who are outside of it or who approach it differently? One example: is sexual intimacy inside loving romantic relationships devalued by the existence of prostitution?
• Do the universalist tendencies of many of these questions bother you? Would you prefer to answer them for yourself only and not claim that your answers are applicable to other people? How applicable do you think your answers are to other people? What connection does their applicability to other people have with whether you think they are good answers? (Are some of these questions questions which have a different answer for each person or for each culture, while other questions do appear to have a single general answer?) If you want to qualify your answer to a question, does that mean that you think it shouldn't be extended to other people/situations, or just that you personally don't feel comfortable extending it? For whom do you feel you are speaking when you answer different kinds of questions, and for whom would you like to speak, or whom would you like your answers to influence? To whom do you think your answers should be of interest, even if you don't expect everybody to agree?

Some of these sound like college application essays, but my point is not to make people show off their expository writing or creative writing skills. My point is just to hear about what people think, and to compare what people think.

See also David Brin's questionnaire, from which I wouldn't mind taking a few questions for a project like this. (Gosh, some of Brin's questions are subtly or not-so-subtly polemical...)

Apparently it was a popular tradition some years ago to send questionnaires to one's friends or to pass them around at parties. I've actually seen a couple of on-line versions that are chain letters, and those are very interesting, but the things they ask are almost always "What is your favorite color?" or "How many siblings do you have?" or "What is your favorite animal?" or (shading over into the purity tests, which are an interesting kind of questionnaire) "How many people have you ever slept with?". And what I'm thinking about is not really asking about people's characteristics but about their beliefs and thoughts about social, political, moral, and philosophical questions.

There are a couple of books of questions in this vein meant to provoke discussion. But I still feel that I'm not even trying to provoke discussion, just to examine the extent of contrasts among people I know (and see what they have to say). If people are interested later on, they could have discussions.