Hello Philosophy Society!

Discussion 1: Biases and Heuristics

Our first discussion was based on our cognitive biases. A cognitive bias is a shortcut form of processing that leads to systematic errors in reasoning. Our brains do this because it is efficient and uses less energy but creates problems in accuracy when interpreting our experiences or the environment.

The Availability Heuristic: our tendency to associate information with what is available in memory. For example, if we recently met a successful person who was an engineer and later in the day someone told us that they were successful and an educated professional, we may think they are also an engineer. Another example would be if someone has problems in their relationship and we recently watched a TV show where a person cheated on their partner, we could assume that the problem in the relationship is infidelity.

The Representative Heuristic: our tendency to associate information with what fits the prototype model of that thing. For example, if someone says, it was a very large mammal in Africa, we may associate an elephant with the category ‘large African mammal,’ when it was actually a hippopotamus. A common mistake is when someone mentions that they saw their doctor recently and people assume that the doctor is male because a male doctor is often associated as the prototype gender of doctors.

We have developed many, more than 150, biases throughout our evolutionary history. At some points, our ancestors had environmental pressures that made certain kinds of traits adaptive but then later were not. Those changes in our DNA stayed with us as our environments changed.

Today, we have to train ourselves to be mindful of our biases and use critical thinking to ensure that our reasoning is sound. This is part of the training we will work on as a group with the Philosophy Society.

Meditation Exercise

We practiced being present in our distracting environment for 5 full breaths. During these breaths, we focused our attention on the breath and any distraction that presented itself in our attention we became aware of but not fixated on. Similar to a cloud passing by the sun, our attention allowed the distraction to move beyond our attention and awareness without fixating on it. The cloud does not stay in front of the sun but slowly moves on through the sky.

Philosophy Academy: Feeling Good

Today we began chapter 3 of feeling good up to page 42.

28 - …Depression is not an emotional disorder at all! … Every bad feeling you have is the result of your distorted negative thinking.

- Intense negative thinking always accompanies a depressive episode, or any painful emotion for that matter.

29 - …the negative thoughts that flood your mind are the actual cause of your self-defeating emotions…negative thoughts, or cognitions…contain the key to relief and are therefore your most important symptoms.

- Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify a corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression. Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood.

- …”automatic thoughts” …run through your mind automatically without the slightest effort on your part to put them there.

- …Your emotions result entirely from the way you look at things…neurological fact that before you can experience any event, you must process it with your mind and give it meaning.

30 - …You must understand what is happening to you before you can feel it

32 - 1. All or Nothing Thinking …tendency to evaluate personal qualities in extreme, black or white thinking…unrealistic because life is rarely completely either one way or the other.

33 - 2. Overgeneralization …arbitrarily conclude that one thing that happened to you once will occur over and over

34 - Mental Filter - …pick out a negative detail in any situation and dwell on it exclusively, thus perceiving that the whole situation is negative

- …all you allow to enter into your conscious mind is negative.

4. Disqualifying the Positive. … the persistent tendency … to transform neutral or even positive experiences into negative ones

36 - 5. Jumping to Conclusions … arbitrarily jump to negative conclusion that is not justified by the facts or the situation.

- Mind Reading: …assumption that other people are looking down on you, and you’re so convinced about this that you don’t even bother to check it out.

37 - The Fortune Teller Error: …imagine that something bad is about to happen, and you take this prediction as a fact even though it is unrealistic.

- 6. Magnification and Minimization -

38 - …either blowing things up out of proportion or shrinking them.. Look at your own errors and exaggerate their importance

7. Emotional Reasoning … take your emotions as evidence for truth …your feelings reflect your thoughts and beliefs. If they are distorted … your emotions will have no validity.

39

8. Should Statements … motivate yourself by saying, “I should do this” or “I must do that.” …cause you to feel pressured and resentful…end up feeling apathetic and unmotivated

- …directed …toward others, you will usually feel frustrated..sour and resentful.

9. Labeling and Mislabeling ..creating a completely negative self-image based on your errors…

40 - …your self cannot be equated with any one thing you do. Your life is a complex and ever-changing flow of thoughts, emotions, and actions.

10. Personalization …assume responsibility for a negative event when there is no basis for doing so…conclude that what happened was your fault or reflects your inadequacy even when you were not responsible for it.

Burns, David. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Harper Publishing. New York, 1999.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Mass Market Paperback – Dec 30 2008

Whatsapp Chat

WaC 1: Suffering and Art

Reggie: But here's the question: if these individuals had not suffered, would they have found their meaning and/or the inspiration needed to create their masterworks?

Another way to look at it: in trying to "guide ourselves" away from suffering, how much of that involves reducing/avoiding certain levels of risk? Risk = taking certain chances in life where the outcome is uncertain and pain/suffering is highly probable. It's difficult to know how these historical figures actually lived other than through writings, only some of which is first-hand. But we do know that they did suffer throughout their lives and right to the end. Perhaps some people choose to embrace suffering in order to achieve greater things, as that gives them purpose.

In one of his posts, Burns brings up a very important point:

The website of David D. Burns, MD | What’s the Meaning and Purpose of My Life? | Feeling Good

Perhaps then it's only about being in a holistic or perpetual state of suffering. Rather, it's about suffering from a certain aspect of your life. Thus when you reflect on your feelings/anxiety, it's equally important that we not overly-focus or dwell on them.

Achilles: Artists make this point that suffering is necessary for creativity but maybe those people are creative and they would have made stuff either way. They could be attributing the creative element to the negative state of mind but it's a correlation not a cause.

Yah dwelling is unconstructive, similar to rumination where the negative thought is repeated without any progress. Whereas there can be growth from reflection by making efforts to understand what happened then change one's course of action for future situations.

Suffering will occur to us and what we do with it has the capacity to create meaning. Suffering is like fertilizer for growth. If we allow shit to build up without using it in a constructive way, then things can become worse.

I find that things are difficult when a challenging goal is sought after. The learning curve is steeper, meaning there are more mistakes. This in turn can lead to more disappointment and suffering. If the individual is able to deal with the pains of the learning process, which entails suffering, they have the opportunity for success with their challenge.

Maybe the goal of the masterwork is that which causes the suffering and most people simply give up because it's too hard to deal with the emotions and figure out alternatives that will reach the goal. Im extreme cases of self harm and suicide, these circumstances are a risk. This suffering has gone too far and is not worth the wellbeing or life of a person. There isn't even a goal in mind but...

Reggie: Here's how I see it: Art is a form of human expression. From a more clinical perspective, art would be considered therapeutic as a creative outlet. Thus to me, the masterworks are the greatest forms of expression, the result of fostered talent and intense emotion. Pain and suffering are intense emotions unlike any of the others. This uniqueness then is likely why we would have never had many of the masterworks we have today.

So yes, I agree that they likely would've produced stuff either way. But would it have been of the same greatness? Arguably not, unless they would've been motivated by 'positive' emotions of the same intensity. We know from numerous studies that people are generally loss averse -- that the pain of loss is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gains.

I would argue then that such loss aversion would extend to other facets of life, not just economics. Put differently, suffering is a much more powerful experience than euphoria. It is longer-lasting and has deeper psychological effects. Further, it seems quite difficult in our society to naturally attain euphoric states, which is why many people turn to drugs, etc.

Going back to the video then, this is where I disagree with it:

I don't think it's just an interplay between desire and discontentment. discontentment can also lead to satisfaction and then back to meaning, and thus the cycle fully evolves. with personal growth, it's less a cycle and more like a spiral with a forward-upward trajectory. Anyway, interesting video nonetheless, as suffering is one of those human experiences that we all dislike but also tend to learn from.

Achilles: I agree with your pain aversion point that it has more impact on us. This adds to the argument that suffering can yield more creative power. But at the same time we function the best in the state of flow.

This is how I see it: Suffering will come to us so we don't need to create it. When it does, do something constructive with it. Human wellbeing is how we deal with suffering. Prolonging suffering is unnecessary because one can simply find a new goal that is challenging or wait for the next interval of hardship and one will have suffering to deal with. I don't like suffering being used as an end in itself for then the person is a means to that end. I guess you can establish this as a value: suffering. But that also seems like a symptom of depression. It's hard to argue for an evolutionary account for suffering over happiness or eudaimonia.

It becomes self defeating and self destructive. We cannot take suffering as a principle to its maximum end for we would be in a society of torture. Society has been actively moving away from this kind of behavior.

Reggie: I don't think anyone would consider suffering a virtue or an end -- unless perhaps you're a masochist lol.

Diane: I don’t think creativity is or isn’t dependent on suffering. I also do not agree with art as therapy! Physical exercise or just reading a book without an immediate response are both excellent exercises. Be alone in a room, any room and think. That’s what one needs to create. Thinking is almost a lost art. On that cheery note I must run !!! Have a great day!

Reggie: There are many ways to cook an egg…

WaC 2: Right to Life

Reggie: Just reading through the right to life discussion. First off, I hope the person is doing okay. Depression is a terrible disease, and I wish them well in their journey towards recovery.

Achilles: Thank you. They are doing better. I am making an effort to check in daily and guide them through.

Reggie: I was a bit perplexed by the claim that society agrees one does not have the right to suicide. Do you mean, given that a person is not of sound mind?

Achilles: Well, we as a society will place someone in care if they intend on killing themselves. If you call 911, ambulance and police will escort a person willing or not to a mental health facility. We actively prevent suicide.

Reggie: Right, because we recognize that it's a mental illness. Hence why we also have decriminalized it. But that said, individuals do have the right to autonomy. And that includes the passage to death. The Supreme Court addressed this during their decision on assisted suicide.

Achilles: True. But suicide is anti-individual. It goes against and is contradictory to what it means to be an existing person. Also, people who are suicidal are not of sound mind. To be autonomous means you are competent, knowledgeable and free. They are lacking competency due to their temporary illness. This is different from euthanasia in cases of terminal illness.

Reggie: I agree with you practically speaking. I would just caution on saying that there is no 'right' to suicide, as then that raises all types of other questions.

Achilles: Rights are given by society. We do not give people this right. We actually restrain them.

Reggie: People have the right to live, liberty and security. This includes the passage of death.

Achilles: As I was standing in the emergency, the person wanted to leave by escaping. They were sneakily planning on how they could escape. The police officers were present and respectfully communicated to the individual that they would be handcuffed if they tried to leave because they were a harm to themselves.

Reggie:

Achilles: It is physically possible for one to kill themselves as a cosmological fact. But if liberty means the right to kill oneself that contradicts the right to life. The passage of death is different from actively creating conditions to die. Passage of death is natural without human influence.

Reggie: Exactly. And that's what the SCC says above, that human life need not be preserved at all costs. So we can decide where to draw the line, but that marker is arbitrary. So there is a right to autonomy, it's just that it's not absolute. No rights are absolute.

Achilles: Well, it's just a physical fact that you can jump in front of a car. But we actively make efforts to protect people. There is no suicide clinic that helps you in the act, we have the opposite.

Reggie: So essentially, we have the right to suicide if it meets several conditions (ie. of sound mind). Correct. I don't disagree with anything you're saying, other than the legal 'rights' aspect.

Achilles: The only condition is in the case of a terminal illness like MS where the person is deteriorating physically or is in extreme pain with only a week to live. Depression is not included.

Reggie: Agreed. So the definition is important. Essentially.

Achilles: Yah the legal part is to preserve one's right to death in medical cases of terminal illness not mental illness.

Reggie: Which leads into your second topic of the newsletter lol.

Achilles: Yah I'm teaching the burn stuff because I know how important our emotions are. Its wisdom 101.

Reggie: Those are two different things.

1: There is a right to autonomy such that we are allowed to act as we will, including killing ourselves. That is why there is no criminal law that punishes attempted suicide.

2: We place conditions around physicians providing end of life care.

There is a hypothetical where a mentally ill person could be cleared by several physicians for euthanasia.

Achilles: Just because it's not a crime doesn't mean we have the right. If we had the right we wouldn't institutionalize people who attempt it. I don't know. If you're mentally ill it means you lack autonomy.

Reggie: I think we need to define what a 'right' is. I'm speaking from a legal perspective. Not moral.

Achilles: A right is a sanction given by society. People have rights because society enforces the protection of them. Hmmm. I would just say X is or is not a criminal. When I think right, it's in the context of human rights. Or x is or is not breaking some law. But we do restrain suicidal people against their will. We say, "no! Bad human!"

Reggie: We do restrain, but we don't punish. But the same thing with injecting heroin or being a prostitute. We place limits on certain rights, legally speaking. There is no law being broken when attempting suicide.

Achilles: Criminalization of things like suicide, drugs, prostitution are reflections of religious dogma present within the law, ignorance to the science of best practices and moral philosophy on these issues. Same with homelessness and poverty.

Reggie: Exactly. The UN claims that all people have the "right to food". But legally speaking, such a claim has no standing.

Achilles: Most social issues do not need to be voted on or determined by political party members. They require social scientists who have discovered best practices the freedom and funding to implement those practices.

Yeah, that's a good point. We do have food banks but not in the way a right would be supported. Food banks don't have enough funding for that. This can lead into a discussion of prisions as modern slavery, at least in the US.

Reggie: Haha yeah we could go down that route... but I think you see my point. lol

Achilles: Or the corrupt nature of prisons as a business in canada. Only certain crimes need incarceration.

I see. Said the oracle of Delphi. Are all oracles physically blind? It would make for poetic irony.

Reggie:

Achilles:

See the moment NASA’s DART spacecraft collides with asteroid

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